UC-NRLF 
 
 ARTHUR J. PILLSBURY 
 
 
LIBRARY j 
 
 OF THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Gl FT OF 
 
 ^ Class 
 
INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 
 
 ITS RELATIONS TO THE 
 STATE AND TO THE 
 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR J. PILLSBURY 
 
 Secretary of the State Board of Examiners of Californi 
 
 Sacramento, California, 
 March 1, 1906 
 

 Printed at the State Printing Office 
 W. W. SHANNON, Superintendent 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Inasmuch as the accounts of the State Orphan Fund 
 of California are audited in the office of the State 
 Board of Examiners, it becomes the duty of the secre 
 tary of that board to acquaint himself with the work 
 of the orphanages drawing aid from the state fund, 
 as well as with the work of the several county Boards of 
 Supervisors in the distribution of state relief granted 
 to dependent children. Also, it is convenient for the 
 secretary, whose work takes him over much of the 
 state, to visit other state institutions and report thereon 
 to the Governor in order that the executive office may 
 be fully advised as to the conduct of such state insti 
 tutions. 
 
 That the present secretary of the State Board of 
 Examiners might be the better qualified to perform 
 the services above indicated, he was directed by Gov 
 ernor George C. Pardee to visit certain eastern states, 
 examine such state and other public institutions as 
 enjoy honorable reputation in their respective lines 
 of work and make such inquiries touching their ad 
 ministration as he should be able to and make report 
 thereon to the Governor of California. 
 
 This the writer proceeded to do, without expense 
 to the fund provided by law for the support of the 
 State Board of Examiners. He left Sacramento for 
 
 163771 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the East September 7, 1905, and returned to his office 
 in Sacramento December 4, of the same year. 
 
 During his absence the writer visited more than 
 eighty public institutions, and other original sources 
 of information, reporting from time to time to the ex 
 ecutive office in California. These reports, so far as 
 they were adapted to the purpose, were sent out from 
 the executive office to the press of the state, in the 
 hope that they might excite a wholesome public interest 
 in public institutions, and the press of California quite 
 generally published or commented upon them. These 
 reports were all written en route, and were intended 
 to be little more than impressions received along the 
 way and were not intended to be received as final con 
 clusions in regard to the subjects treated. 
 
 Since their publication there has been a demand for 
 the subject-matter in a more enduring form, and more 
 fully digested, and it is the purpose of the following 
 pages to supply this demand. If the text abounds 
 more abundantly in the personal opinions and con 
 clusions of the writer than in descriptions of institu 
 tions visited it is because the limits of space required 
 as much condensation as possible, and because the 
 writer is prone to ventilate his own opinions if con 
 venient occasion offers. 
 
 What has been written was written with the whole 
 field of observation in view rather than with such 
 glimpses of the field as he was able to obtain while 
 hurrying over some thousands of miles of American 
 railroads and of streets in American cities. 
 
 The writer begs to acknowledge the most open- 
 handed and open-hearted courtesy on the part of the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 managers of institutions wherever he went. If he was 
 disappointed in any one particular more than another 
 it was in the discovery that there is not any science of 
 society worked out with enough of exactness to war 
 rant its being called a science, or any "only way" of 
 conducting an institution devoted to public service. 
 
 The elemental factor in institutional life is the per 
 sonality in the executive head of each institution, and 
 the way in which each such personality can best express 
 himself is the best way for that personality to perform 
 his service. His subordinates will lend the executive 
 their invaluable aid more through promptings of per 
 sonal fealty than because of a conscious intellectual 
 conformity with his policy. 
 
 The author is solely responsible for conclusions 
 reached and recommendations offered in this volume, 
 and its publication does not imply executive or other 
 official indorsement of anything herein contained. 
 
 A. J. PILLSBURY. 
 
iTY 
 
 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 Its Relations to the State and to the 
 Wards of the State. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE PROBLEM. 
 
 There are in the United States, without pretense of 
 being able to give exact figures in all instances, one 
 blind person to each 1800 of the general population, 
 one deaf person to each 1500, one epileptic to each 
 500, one person so feeble-minded as to be incapable of 
 intelligent self-direction to each 300, one insane person 
 to each 300, one delinquent or criminal to each 300 and 
 one dependent child to each 100 of children who have 
 parents or guardians who can and do support them. 
 This is a part of the social load which our burden- 
 bearing general public has to carry. 
 
 The Cost It costs somewhere in the vicinity of $300 
 to maintain each blind person at the public charge for 
 one year, something less for each deaf person, not far 
 from $200 for each epileptic, and from $150 to $200 
 per year for each feeble-minded person maintained in 
 an institution. It will be understood that this cost of 
 maintenance, in these instances, includes the cost of 
 educating as well as of feeding, clothing and housing. 
 
 The cost of maintaining insane persons in institu 
 tions for their care and treatment is about $175 per 
 capita per year. Dependent childhood costs, in one 
 way or another, at least $120. per capita per year. The 
 cost of delinquency and criminality for the United 
 
8 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 States as a whole has been lumped off by good authority 
 at a sum greater by many millions of dollars than is 
 expended for all forms of education, public and private. 
 
 Preventive or Palliative The results of the writer s 
 investigations and observations have impressed upon 
 him the conviction that the history of human develop 
 ment has been, and still is, a history of getting out of 
 trouble, but seldom or never of steering clear of trouble. 
 It has ever been, and still is, the policy of the public 
 to apply palliatives to sore spots, but seldom to venture 
 to strike at the roots of social disease. 
 
 Institutional life is mainly a palliative and only a 
 preventive in a secondary and modified way. As this 
 document deals in the main with institutional life, so 
 will it, in the main, deal with >alliatives and only 
 secondarily and incidentally with preventive measures, 
 which, however, are much better worth public con 
 sideration. The original sources of social disease lie 
 far too deep to be reached by such a superficial inves 
 tigation as was made by the author of this booklet. 
 Those who would get at the roots of social disorders 
 must needs delve deep and toil long. 
 
 No Occasion for Pessimism Although society has, 
 heretofore, paid comparatively little attention to effect 
 ive preventive measures it is encouraging to note that 
 there are more students of social diseases now at work 
 than ever before in the history of civilization, both in 
 Europe and in this country. It is not too much to hope 
 that, when these students have found what needs to 
 l>e done, publicists will find means for doing the need 
 ful things. Meantime, palliatives should be diligently 
 sought and applied, and nowhere with a more dis 
 criminating intelligence than in institutional life. 
 
 If the foregoing conclusions seem to anticipate what 
 should have been allowed to develop in the body of 
 the book the writer s excuse is that he happened to 
 think of them just at this time. 
 
HUMAN LIMITATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 HUMAN LIMITATIONS. 
 
 It may be well to prefix some reasonable bounds to 
 expectation before entering upon an investigation of 
 institutional life, lest we meet with disappointment 
 at every turn. The ordinary reformer is idealistic 
 and so uncompromising in his exactions that he has 
 small patience with performance that falls short of a 
 full realization of his Utopian dream. This is dis 
 couraging to those who are accomplishing the best 
 results possible under the circumstances in which they 
 must work, and makes against practical improvement. 
 
 Highest Altruism Rare It is too much to expect 
 that all persons in charge of the wards of the state will 
 be forgetful of self in the face of duty. Not all of the 
 members of President Lincoln s cabinet were wholly 
 so, even when confronted by a foe that threatened 
 the national life. There are social service workers who 
 do utterly sink themselves in their work, but there are 
 not any considerable proportion of them capable of 
 entire self-renunciation. Most public institutions must 
 be conducted, in the main, by persons whose hire will 
 be a determining consideration with them. 
 
 A Circumscribed Horizon The nature of institutional 
 life tends to circumscribe the horizons of those en 
 trusted with the management. While visiting eighty- 
 odd institutions I found few persons who seemed to be 
 in doubt as to the wisdom of the policy which they were 
 themselves pursuing, or who had much patience with 
 the advocates of any other policy. There existed in 
 many instances a sense of self-sufficiency which can 
 not have been otherwise than unfavorable to progress, 
 yet this is a very human limitation and not likely to be 
 wholly overcome no matter how many associations of 
 
10 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 institutional workers may come into being, and yet 
 such associations do exert a liberalizing tendency. 
 
 Tendency to Rut This tendency touches all things 
 human and nothing more certainly than institutional 
 life. It is not without its value in that it enables 
 society to hold fast, very fast, to that which is good as 
 well as to that which might be bettered were the spirit 
 of enterprise more sharply manifested. This is only 
 another manifestation of the grim inertia of the human 
 race, the paramount obstacle in the way of human de 
 velopment, and we must not be disheartened if we find 
 it also in institutional life. 
 
 Lack of a Free Hand Many a superintendent of an 
 institution would make progress along wise lines were 
 it not for the lack of a free hand, but there are few 
 boards of directors who can resist the temptation to 
 exert sufficient authority to keep their superintendent 
 humbly hedged in, and yet no institution can be com 
 pletely successful whose executive officer has not 
 plenary powers within the sphere of superintending. 
 The best work in institutional life is done where a 
 single, overmastering personality dominates. If boards 
 of directors would content themselves with outlining 
 general policies, leaving executive functions wholly 
 to their superintendents, better results would be ac 
 complished. 
 
 Spirit Strong, Flesh Weak Finally, with the best 
 intentions imaginable, much less than ideal results must 
 be put up with in institutional life for the reason that 
 it is not humanly possible to make performance com 
 mensurate with desire. With the most unbounded zeal 
 work along correct lines is often disappointing, be 
 cause physical and mental endurance is unequal to the 
 task in hand. 
 
 If the reader of this pamphlet shall find Institutional 
 Life disappointing, by reason of a partial failure to 
 "make good," this chapter will enable him to under 
 stand the reason why. 
 
WHO ARE THE WARDS OF THE STATE? 11 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 WHO ARE THE WARDS OF THE STATE? 
 
 A brief survey of the field covered, in whole or in 
 part, by the institutional life of our country will suffice 
 to emphasize what society, with a very large "S," is 
 confronted with. 
 
 Disobedient and Untrained These constitute by far 
 the larger number who are a burden to social order, and 
 that it is so is largely the fault of society itself. Chil 
 dren should not be allowed to grow up untrained, and as 
 long as they are society will not be without its problems 
 of criminality and destitution. Every child is of con 
 cern to the state from the very cradle, and the sooner 
 it is looked after the less of a burden is it likely to 
 become. If parents neglect to train their children it 
 is at least partially because society does not enforce 
 parental responsibility. 
 
 Earners of the Wages of Sin These are mainly in 
 cluded in the class mentioned in the preceding para 
 graph, but they none the less deserve special mention, 
 if for no other reason, then because society itself is 
 seemingly less conscious of sin, plain, old-fashioned sin, 
 than in a former period. We hear much of vice and 
 crime, but sin is the seed of which vice and crime are 
 the full corn in the ear. If the American people could 
 be recalled to an old-time consciousness of the "sinful- 
 ness of sin" their institutional load would be much 
 lightened. 
 
 Victims of Injustice This class mainly includes in 
 digent women and dependent children. Many men 
 enter the marriage relation through promptings wholly 
 physical, and when they find the responsibilities in 
 curred irksome, and such men invariably do, they shirk 
 those responsibilities without a grimace. They even 
 do it in the reassuring consciousness that society will 
 
12 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 obligingly bear the burden they have thrown off. Their 
 earning capacity suffices only to supply their expansive 
 wants and they live lives of pure self-gratification until 
 they, too, become charges upon public bounty and are 
 buried at public expense. There is nothing that, at 
 the present time, comes nearer to being a "crying" 
 evil than this, and yet society has scarcely begun to 
 look for a remedy for it. 
 
 The Superannuated The cheapening of the earning 
 capacity of capital in the markets of the world has not 
 been an unmixed blessing. It requires that a much 
 larger accumulation than formerly of surplus earnings 
 be made during the hey-dey of life for the support of 
 old age, and few there be whose accumulations of a 
 lifetime are sufficient to that end. When no longer able 
 to pull their own weight the superannuated must be 
 sustained by their relatives or by some form of public 
 charity. This has tended to fill hospitals for the insane 
 with persons who are not insane, but who have grown 
 old, not sweetly, but too soon, and w r ho are committed 
 to such institutions for the reason that society has 
 made no other provision for them. A hundred senile 
 cases recently investigated in Massachusetts showed 
 that all of them were better off in the hospitals for the 
 insane than anywhere else they could be put, and yet 
 they had no real right to be there, being only broken 
 in mind as in body, but not in any proper sense insane. 
 
 Physical and Moral Cripples Under a proper social 
 order these would be the only ones with whom organ 
 ized society would have to concern itself, and, relatively 
 to the whole dependent mass, their number is infini 
 tesimal. The Avord "degeneracy" is susceptible of 
 infinite abuse. Degeneracy has been defined as being 
 a "degradation of development below the average 
 normal type." There isn t anything very serious in 
 that unless development be so far below the average 
 as to bo impossible of reasonable rectification by care- 
 
WHAT .MAKKS C()()D BOYS BAD. 13 
 
 ful training. The degenerate foreordained to be a 
 burden upon social life conies much nearer being the 
 thousandth than the hundredth man. Most human 
 ills are therefore remediable. The common herd is not 
 a bad herd to breed from if the offspring be given 
 proper nurture from the start, and it is sound policy 
 for society to see to it that it gets it. 
 
 The Others Aside from the classes mentioned above 
 as wards of the state we have with us the blind, the deaf, 
 the insane, the feeble-minded and those camp followers 
 in the campaign of life known as hoboes. The fore 
 going topics will make sufficient drafts upon the time 
 and patience of the average reader. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 WHAT MAKES GOOD BOYS BAD. 
 
 We are all of us animals. Adam was an animal, and 
 every boy born since then has had a good deal of Adam 
 in him. Animalism is the groundwork of the race. 
 Morality consists in warring against and rising superior 
 to primitive instincts which we have in common with 
 the animal world. Social order has prohibited first 
 one and then another form of conduct common to all 
 animals, has done it for the common good, and in spite 
 of propensity. Therefore, the boy that is left to grow 
 up as animals grow, untrained, develops an almost 
 purely physical existence, and every such boy becomes 
 a bad boy. 
 
 Disobedience Not one boy in a hundred has the 
 evolutionary impulse within him strong enough to 
 raise him above the life of the physical being except 
 his steps be guided by parental or other authority. 
 This requires obedience, and where obedience is not 
 required at home authority will be resisted at school 
 and the boy will become a truant or be expelled from 
 
14 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 school as unfit to associate with other children. The 
 disobedient pupil is likely to become a disobedient 
 citizen, to wit : a law-breaker. 
 
 Paternal Example There is many a boy in a reform 
 school for no other reason than that he was doing just 
 what his father did, was unsteadily employed, spent 
 his evenings loafing around the streets and saloons and 
 was to be found at his home only at mealtime. There 
 comes a time in the life of most boys when they get 
 beyond the control of their mothers. If paternal 
 responsibility is not then affirmed the boy is likely to 
 be lost. 
 
 A Wrong Start Boys are made bad by giving them 
 a wrong start in life. It is the old story of the twig 
 wrongly bent that resulted in a tree inclined, and this 
 may come about through a variety of ways, but mainly 
 by leaving the boy to his own devices. Left to himself 
 a boy grows up as a young colt would grow, if not 
 vicious at least ungovernable without some drastic 
 form of breaking-in, which task is generally turned 
 over to the police or to the reform school. A boy who 
 is started right may go wrong after all, but he will 
 seldom get entirely away from right standards of 
 living. It will be easier for him to learn to behave than 
 if he had never behaved. 
 
 Untrained Hands There is nothing more intensely 
 alive than the normal boy. There is something doing 
 every waking minute of his life. Nature is doing the 
 best it can to educate him, but, as with all humanity, 
 along animal rather than moral lines. If his hands 
 are not given some good thing to do they will do some 
 evil thing, for do things they must. It is a law of 
 his being. 
 
 No Money of His Own A boy has wants innumer 
 able. Not all of those wants are legitimate, but some 
 of them are. Many boys have as little that they can 
 
WHAT MAKES GOOD BOYS BAD. 15 
 
 call their own, that they do not steal, as the slaves of 
 the South had on the plantations in ante-bellum days. 
 Is there any wonder that the slaves stole from their 
 masters? And is there any wonder that boys without 
 other source of income learn to pick up every thing of 
 value that they lay their hands on? Of all evil habits 
 that of petty larceny is about the hardest to break up, 
 whether formed by a boy or a girl. The thing has been 
 done so many times that it just does itself. It isn t 
 second nature. It is first nature, for that is the way the 
 animal gets all that it has. If morality does not inhibit 
 the practice it will be followed as naturally as eating 
 and drinking. Every child must be trained to be honest, 
 or it will be a thief without guilt if not without guile. 
 The untaught child is under the dispensation of the 
 law of the survival of the fittest, and the fittest is the 
 one most successful in supplying its own physical 
 wants. 
 
 Adolescence The voice-changing period is the most 
 critical in the life of every boy. At this period he is 
 not wholly accountable, and he lives in the present as 
 truly as the bird. The criminal degenerate affirms that 
 "I do the deed first and then afterward I consider it." 
 It is so with almost every boy during the voice-changing 
 period. He does not come into possession of his right 
 mind until that crucial period is over. At that period 
 he demands action, action, action. When reflection 
 starts out to find him it mny have to search behind 
 prison bars, the more especially if he has not some good 
 guardian angel in human form to hold him in leash 
 and direct his activities into right channels. 
 
 The Black Sheep Problem But there are boys who 
 go off wrong even from the best regulated families 
 and in spite of the most solicitous and even prayerful 
 care. The problem of the black sheep in the family 
 is a very real problem. There are such sheep, but it 
 does not follow that because they are black they are 
 innately bad. The trouble is that the ordinary family 
 
1(3 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 does not afford the sort of nurture this special creation 
 requires. Institutional life sometimes fits such needs 
 better than family life. By trying to adapt them to 
 the same influences that suffice for their brothers and 
 sisters a failure is scored and a bad boy is produced. 
 Out of the innumerable strains of beings that have 
 contributed to the family heredity there came into 
 this one s veins something alien to the rest of his kin, 
 and the fact was not recognized. Hence the problem 
 of the black sheep in that flock of otherwise untarnished 
 white. 
 
 The Human Animal The fact should never be lost 
 sight of that every human being, of the male sex, is 
 prenatally disposed, from the dawn of puberty to self- 
 realization, to become an anti-social being and almost 
 morbidly individualistic. This tendency should have 
 been forestalled between the cradle and the dawn of 
 puberty. If it was not the result is a bad boy. Such 
 a boy has become bad through misfortune rather than 
 through fault, and the responsibility rests primarily 
 upon shoulders other than his own. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 WHAT MAKES BAD BOYS GOOD. 
 
 Those who have read the preceding chapter at all 
 thoughtfully had suggested to their own minds as they 
 went along the proper remedies to be applied to most 
 of the ailments therein suggested. It will therefore be 
 unnecessary to recapitulate, but only to add some con 
 clusions I have reached in the light of what I have seen 
 and heard. 
 
 Transplanting Many shrubs spring up in the forest 
 which fail of coming to a useful maturity for want of 
 opportunity. They are shaded, starved and dried out 
 until they live merely to exist, but not to grow to 
 fruitful use. More than half of the so-called bad boys 
 
WHAT MAKES BAD BOYS GOOD. 17 
 
 are in need of transplanting. They have been over- 
 shadowed by bad example, starved for want of loving 
 nurture, have stuck their roots into scanty domestic 
 soil, and their innate demand for physical action, not 
 having been rightly directed, has developed them into 
 public nuisances. The best place to put such a boy is 
 in a good home where he will be kindly, but firmly, 
 handled, as a promising colt assuredly would be because 
 possessed of a property value. So is the boy possessed 
 of a property value. Every robust, productive, well- 
 ordered and skilled mechanic is worth $2000 a year 
 to the state. Every capable criminal will cost the state 
 $2000 a year while at large. It is worth while to trans 
 plant youthful shoots that need it. Next to a good 
 home, a good military or training school is best for 
 training an overly individualistic youth. This school 
 ing should be obtained through an enforcement of 
 parental responsibility, wherein we are now weak and 
 vascillating. If there be no other recourse, then send 
 the lad to a public reform school. He may not there 
 find the best sort of chance to grow normally, but he 
 will be given a chance, and probably the first chance 
 he has ever had. Most of the so-called reformations of 
 character effected by reform schools belong to this 
 class. They have given these boys a chance, and they 
 have made use of it. That is the whole story. 
 
 Self -Realization "First the blade and then the ear 
 and then the full corn in the ear." That is the normal 
 process of human development; and the full corn is 
 self-realization, and the crown of that glory is common 
 sense. There are belated beings who do not achieve 
 common sense until comparatively late in life, and some 
 never achieve it and are impracticable fools and ne er- 
 do-wells all their lives. The normal and well-trained 
 child will come into his inheritance of common sense, 
 usually, between eighteen and twenty-one years of age. 
 Those who have not had proper youthful training may 
 be sent into retirement in an institution and be there 
 
18 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 held on to, and kept from harming themselves and the 
 public, until self-realization develops. Next to trans 
 planting, this opportunity to await self-realization and 
 common sense in seclusion has scored more so-called 
 reformations of bad boys than anything else. 
 
 / Probation But the best time to make a bad boy 
 j good is before he becomes bad. Pardon the Hibernian- 
 ism ! Most so-called bad boys are not really bad. They 
 are only becoming so. This development of badness 
 is the nuisance period of their lives. They plague the 
 police and the neighbors, and are hustled off to a 
 reform school to be gotten rid of. This is a wrong to 
 the boy, and often he can be set about-face at this time 
 with a little effort. He has had his own injurious way 
 and needs to feel the grip of the law on his shoulder. 
 The juvenile court and probation officer may, if they 
 exercise the faculty of common sense, perform a vast 
 service at this stage of adverse development, but they 
 must not, through weakness, make a travesty of proba 
 tion. I have found boys in reform schools who had 
 been on probation as many as eleven times before 
 being committed to a reform school. It is right to 
 give an unruly boy a chance, and another chance, and 
 possibly still another, but there must be some not too 
 distant barrier over which he can not leap without 
 being summarily brought to book. The boy will know 
 how far he can go without being told, and is likely to 
 go the limit. 
 
 Parental Responsibility In every case parental re 
 sponsibility should be exhausted before the hand of the 
 \ law is laid upon the delinquent boy. There are those 
 who seem to feel (think they do not) that they are at 
 liberty to reproduce their unprofitable kind unlimitedly 
 and turn the litter loose to hustle for itself. Such 
 persons need to be forced to discharge the duty of 
 parentage, the highest duty of citizenship, or take 
 consequences as serious to themselves as disciplinary 
 regulations can inflict. The American public is cul- 
 
WHAT MAKES GOOD GIRLS BAD. 19 
 
 pably lax in enforcing parental responsibility. Juvenile 
 courts are doing much to remedy this defect, and their 
 efforts are worthy of cordial and determined support. 
 
 Real Reformation Rare When I started out on my 
 recent pilgrimage I had entertained the hope that I 
 should somewhere find an institution of some sort that 
 could successfully undertake the reformation of a de 
 formed human character. I might as well have sought 
 the. Holy Grail. The institutions I saw were devoted 
 to the formation, not the re-formation of character. 
 Deformed characters are sometimes reformed, but not 
 by institutions constructed by human hands or by laws 
 fashioned by human minds. If the soul of the way 
 ward be touched by the grace of God with power, as in 
 the case of Paul on the way to Damascus, the crooked 
 character may be made straight. Institutional life has 
 not many re-formations of that character to take credit 
 for. It may bear witness as to some, but not of its own 
 doing. 
 
 The chapter on manual training will throw some 
 additional light upon the subject of this chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 WHAT MAKES GOOD GIRLS BAD. 
 
 Nature has ordained that the girl, much more than 
 the boy, is likely to be sinned against. This fact has 
 inspired all civilized societies to safeguard girls much 
 more carefully than boys. Where girls go to the bad 
 it is mainly because the social order in which they were 
 reared was not civilized. It may have had the outward 
 semblance of civilization, but inwardly it was primitive 
 if not savage. 
 
 Broken Homes Firstly, secondly and thirdly, what 
 makes good girls bad is broken homes, broken homes, 
 broken homes ! The home may have been broken by 
 death or by divorce, or yet by separation without 
 
20 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 divorce, but whatever breaks up the home establishes 
 favoring conditions for good girls becoming bad girls. 
 The roster of every girls reform school in America will 
 bear testimony to this fact. 
 
 The Silly Age Almost every girl has a silly age 
 corresponding to the "bull calf" age of the boy. This 
 is her vulnerable period. At that time, unless re 
 strained, she is given to gadding, and the gadding girl 
 forms few good associations and many bad ones. If 
 there are scandals connected with the public or other 
 schools which the girl attends it is at this time. The 
 girl is impressionable to a degree, has little common 
 sense, is averse to sustained employment of any kind 
 and wants money to spend. 
 
 Stubbornness When an attempt is made to restrain 
 a girl at this period of life she is not unlikely to be 
 come stubborn and rebellious. Her mother can handle 
 her to little better advantage than she can handle her 
 half-grown son, and, if she be a weak woman, she gives 
 up trying. In Connecticut stubbornness is a misde 
 meanor and gives the state the right to interfere for 
 the protection of the wrong-headed girl from herself. 
 Such interference is generally timely and productive 
 of good results. 
 
 Accessory to the Fact At this period in a girl s life 
 she wants to make herself attractive. She would not 
 be a daughter of Eve if she did not. Like the boy, 
 she wants to quit school arid go to work, often in some 
 department store in a great city where she can dress 
 well and see, and be seen, by many people. The man 
 ager of the great department store is exacting with 
 regard to her personal appearance, but in most in 
 stances is parsimonious in the measure of compensation 
 for services rendered. He knows that the girl can not 
 keep up appearances on her weekly stipend, and he may 
 be well assured that if she can not, and her own rela 
 tives do not come to her rescue, she will be tempted to 
 
WHAT MAKES GOOD GIRLS BAD. 21 
 
 barter her honor for the finery she craves. He has 
 therefore made himself accessory before the fact to 
 her seduction, and an accomplice before the fact stands 
 in the same situation, as to moral turpitude, as the 
 principal offender. Commercial greed has done nothing 
 more damning than this. Nearly every girl sent to a 
 reform school or erring women s home is there mainly 
 because of unchastity, and no inconsiderable part of 
 the unchastity of fallen womanhood is traceable to this 
 cause. It is time public sentiment took up arms against 
 this cause for the downfall of immature womanhood. 
 
 The Roadhouse All over the country roadhouses and 
 wayside inns are to be found where liquors are sold to 
 those who find occasion to patronize them while out 
 riding in automobiles, carriages or on bicycles. The 
 sex organism of the female is much more readily in 
 fluenced by alcoholic stimulation than that of the male. 
 Many, perhaps most, fallen women affirm, very likely 
 in good faith, that their downfall was accomplished 
 through their being drugged. In many cases they 
 were probably not drugged. They were merely plied 
 with wine at some roadhouse or side-entrance saloon 
 after the vaudeville. That was sufficient. Society 
 has some responsibilities here, too, if it is to make 
 pretense to civilization. 
 
 The Maternal Instinct After all, the thing which, 
 more than all else, leads the steps of adolescent girlhood 
 away from the path of rectitude and furnishes the 
 impulse for the self-indulgent life is the maternal 
 instinct, if not newly born, at least powerfully empha 
 sized by the processes attending a budding womanhood. 
 As a rule the inmates of rescue homes have a passion 
 ate love for babies, their own and everybody s. Until 
 self-realization and the dawn of commonsense judg 
 ment come to her rescue society can not too safely 
 guard the possessor of this instinct against such an 
 abuse of it as a possible over-emphasis may inflict. 
 
22 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 The Natural-Born Prostitute There are those who 
 wash their hands of responsibility for the social evil, 
 which haunts with sleuth-like tread the path of every 
 girl whose steps are inclined to wander, by declaring 
 that most bad girls are innately bad and it Avas that 
 they might be of the demi-monde that they were born 
 into the world. This is not and never was true of any 
 considerable number of women. The girls who go 
 wrong are much like other girls, only more giddy and 
 silly because less carefully trained. Born harlots there 
 are, but they are as rare as born geniuses. Probably 
 not one prostitute in a hundred, and not one wayward 
 girl in ten thousand, is of that character. There are 
 very few of them in the reform schools for girls; but 
 a serious degree of depravity may be acquired when 
 not inherited. It is for the prevention of this tendency 
 that society needs to put forth its most determined 
 effort. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 HOW BAD GIRLS ARE MADE GOOD. 
 
 No small part of the method of reformation sug 
 gested for bad boys is equally applicable to the refor 
 mation of bad girls, and yet the problem is constitu 
 tionally different. The wayward boy has no Nemesis 
 camping on his trail. Every wayward girl has. This 
 makes her problem more difficult. 
 
 The Love of a Good Woman Of all remedial meas 
 ures less than divine, to be sought for the redemption 
 of a wayward girl, the unselfish love of a good woman 
 ranks first. Such a woman must not only be good, and 
 capable of a boundless love for her weakling sisters, 
 but she must be strong, a sort of haven of refuge to 
 Avhom the stricken may fly for sympathy, counsel and 
 protection. There are such women, and when a reform 
 school gets such an one at its head it achieves success. 
 When it does not it fails substantially if not utterly. 
 
HOW BAD GIRLS ARE MADE GOOD. 23 
 
 Holding in Leash As with boys, so with girls, they 
 are sometimes redeemed to right living by being held 
 under an unsleeping surveillance until they come to 
 themselves, which they are likely to do, if at all, by the 
 time they are twenty-one. If to a wayward tendency 
 they have added the drinking habit, and morphine, if 
 they have come to crave the sensational life of the 
 redlight district they may, even after self-realization, 
 return to the old life by deliberate preference. If so, 
 so be it. They will take places that would otherwise 
 be filled by better material, will not be likely to re 
 produce their kind more than once before sterility 
 possesses them, and their end will be no great way off. 
 Society owes girls the duty of holding them in leash 
 until they have reached a capacity for making an in 
 telligent, if not always a wise choice, after which the 
 issue must rest with them. About half of those taken 
 out of prostitution will return to it of their own free 
 wills, but not so much for the gratification of the sex 
 emotion as for the wild life that goes with it. 
 
 Unceasing Occupation Intelligent and effective labor 
 is, next to Love, the best reformatory agent for way 
 ward girls. They are all untrained. It is the rarest 
 thing imaginable to find a girl committed to a reforma 
 tory who comes there with a good knowledge of cook 
 ing, sewing and general housekeeping. Usually such 
 girls can not even sweep or dust, wash dishes or scrub 
 kitchen floors. When they have learned to perform 
 sustained labor of any kind for half a day at a time 
 they are on the high-road toward reformation. The 
 sewing classes, cooking schools, classes in dress-mak 
 ing and millinery appeal to them, as a rule very readily. 
 
 Accomplishments The normal girl takes to accom 
 plishments as a duck to water. These may be superfi 
 cial, but if they are showy they will serve, often a very 
 useful purpose. Music, instrumental and vocal, fancy 
 work, elocutionary recitations and theatricals, drills, 
 physical training all tend to broaden the sphere of 
 
 
24 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 girlish interest and to save from the purely physical 
 and emotional lives they have been leading. Education 
 comes hard to them, for the reason that they have had 
 little of it. Most girls sent to reform schools are not 
 beyond the third or fourth grades in the public schools 
 and many have had no education at all. Give the girls 
 a chance. Often it is all they need, or ever have needed, 
 in order to become good girls and good women, and 
 many a girl goes out of a reform school and into 
 domestic service so much more accomplished than her 
 rural sisters that she is soon married to some reputable 
 young farmer and lives happil} r and worthily ever after. 
 
 Matrimony and Motherhood It was at first with 
 some misgivings that I found a well-organized matri 
 monial bureau connected with a reform school for girls, 
 but I have become reconciled to it. I was fearful as to 
 what the harvest might be because I had been haunted 
 with the conviction that most reform school girls were 
 essentially abnormal and not good stock to derive 
 American citizens from. There is some danger from this 
 cause, but no more than from the customary marrying 
 and giving in marriage in society at large. The percent 
 age of congenital abnormality is not essentially higher 
 in institutional life than out of it. There is plenty of it 
 everywhere. But the wayward girl, held in leash until 
 trained for the performance of life s ordinary duties, 
 and then married to a reputable man, is as well dis 
 posed of as she can be. And when a pledge of love, 
 in the shape of a first baby, nestles next to her matronly 
 heart her cup of joy invariably overflows to the good 
 woman whose .all-encompassing love first set her upon 
 her feet and made her to stand upon them until she 
 could stand alone. She is then a saved woman if any 
 thing less than divine grace can ever save a woman 
 who gets started in the wrong direction. 
 
 In speaking of the normality of reform school girls 
 I have made a mental reservation touching those who 
 are feeble-minded or insane, for these have no business 
 
IX T1JE LIGHT OF FIFTY YFARS. ^0 
 
 
 
 in a reform school, and are given consideration in a 
 separate chapter. Every reform school should have 
 at command the services of an expert alienist to aid in 
 weeding out this class. Nothing worth while can be 
 done for them in such an institution. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 IN THE LIGHT OF FIFTY YEARS. 
 
 The Reform School at Rochester, New York, is one 
 of the oldest, and has been recognized as one of the 
 best, in the country. It has had fifty years of experi 
 ence with the problem of juvenile reformation and has 
 made a record well worth studying. 
 
 Began with Bolts and Bars In the beginning it was 
 a prison. The truant and delinquent lads sent to it to 
 be reformed were thrown into prison cells and forced 
 to thrust their little hands out through prison bars at 
 night in order that they might be counted to see that 
 none had run away from this delightful retreat. It 
 kept the boys where the dogs could not bite them, but 
 returned comparatively few of .them to society pre 
 pared for a reputable citizenship. 
 
 Manual Training Era The best work this institution 
 lias over done in the way of reforming bad boys and 
 girls was during the hey-dey of the manual training 
 era. For some years the institution enjoyed the services 
 of a very capable and enthusiastic believer in manual 
 training, and the boys, and girls, too, took hold of the 
 work with great zeal, but this teacher overworked to the 
 point of nervous prostration, and afterward manual 
 training became by degrees more and more subordi 
 nated to the industrial work of supplying the wants 
 of the school. It is still employed, but not with the 
 old-time enthusiasm and with results less beneficial, 
 though still important. 
 
26 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 
 
 Military Discipline In 1886 military discipline was 
 inaugurated by an excellent disciplinarian, and this 
 feature at once became the dominant spirit of the 
 school. It was carried so far as to equip the boys with 
 rifles and sharp bayonets, but from that day to this 
 no serious casualty has occurred because of these 
 youngsters being thus armed with weapons that would 
 enable them, if they were to conspire to that end, to 
 murder every officer in the institution. Military disci 
 pline has been an aid in teaching obedience and in 
 giving the lads carriage and address, but it turns out 
 an institutional product. Every school should have 
 something of military training, but the experience at 
 Rochester has demonstrated that it is not w^ell to have 
 the military idea overshadow all others. It is a good 
 assistant, but a bad master. 
 
 Corporal Punishment Abolished A few years later 
 the military regime was so far modified as to permit 
 the inauguration of a system of discipline based on 
 fatigue duty instead of corporal punishment, which 
 has now been abolished in New York by law. The 
 disciplinarian was a very capable woman, and her 
 disciplinary system was intelligent, humane and firm. 
 Great things were expected of it and much good was 
 accomplished by it, but the fatigue tasks gradually 
 grew longer and more severe, the solitary confinements 
 more numerous and prolonged, until they became no 
 less severe than corporal punishment, reasonably in 
 flicted. Besides, the military teachers were constantly 
 protesting against a divided authority and, finally, 
 after fifteen years of trial, the advocates of militarism 
 won out and the excellent woman disciplinarian was 
 given other work to do at Albany. It is so much easier 
 to make a boy do right than to cause him to do right 
 because right is best for him, and so much more readily 
 comprehensible by the average male officer in a re 
 formatory institution, that the military gentlemen in 
 charge feel that they have achieved a great victory. 
 
IN THE LIGHT OF FIFTY YKARS. 27 
 
 Their success is to be short lived. As the inmates are 
 transferred to the farm, now in process of preparation, 
 militarism will be subordinated to domesticity, if it be 
 
 not abolished altogether, which would also be unfor 
 tunate. 
 
 Girls Department Closed About ten years ago, the 
 last of the girls having been discharged or placed out, 
 and no new ones admitted, this department was closed. 
 Co-reformation had not worked well. The knowledge 
 of the character of girls in the institution was sufficient 
 within itself to prove a demoralizing tendency. Their 
 co-education was not, however, given a fully satisfac 
 tory trial because the teachers started out with a 
 radical disbelief in it. Under a cottage system, where 
 the inmates are carefully classified as to character, it 
 might work well, but the result is at best problematical. 
 This will be the more apparent if the reader will bethink 
 him of what would be the probable results upon the 
 morality of any co-educational institution if it came 
 to be known that there were in attendance a number of 
 young women of questionable morality. 
 
 Going to the Country As a result of the fifty years 
 of experience of Rochester Eeform School it is moving 
 to the country and will soon become "The Agricultural 
 and Industrial Reform School" of Western New York. 
 For this purpose 1406 acres of fairly good land have 
 been purchased at Pixley, not far from Rochester, and 
 it is being transformed into thirty farms or gardens. 
 The farms will comprise about fifty acres each. The 
 gardens will be smaller and correspondingly more in 
 tensely cultivated. The buildings on each farm will 
 cost about $10,000 and will accommodate 25 boys each, 
 with barns for cows and horses, pigs and chickens. 
 Each two-cottages will constitute a school district, and 
 the teacher will hold school in one during the morning 
 hours and in the other during the . afternoon. The 
 housework will be done mainly by the boys, and a half 
 of each dav will be given to farm work. There will be 
 
28 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 shops centrally located for such industrial work as 
 self-support requires to have done. The brightest lads 
 will be given the shop work. The dunderheads will 
 farm. It is to be hoped that the New York farmer will 
 not prove insensible to the delicate compliment thus 
 conveyed him. 
 
 The Redemptive Element If the new system is to 
 evolve any saving grace above the old it will be because 
 of the quality of the "house fathers" and "house 
 mothers" who are to be put in immediate charge of 
 the thirty cottages. They are being selected by civil 
 service methods. Each man and wife will receive $900 
 a year and house and food. The crucial struggle now 
 is to find the right persons for these positions. They 
 must be without children of their own, resolute, robust 
 and tactful, with hearts in their work, or the scheme 
 will fail. 
 
 Agricultural Education .Not Contemplated This sort 
 of education is thought to be beyond reform school boys. 
 The house masters are to receive instruction in methods 
 from the college of agriculture at Cornell, and some 
 thing of this is expected to filter down to the boys, but 
 the plan is to make physical, not educated, farmers or, 
 more property, farm laborers. 
 
 Their Stay Short Fifty years of experience has 
 taught the wisdom of getting boys out of the reform 
 school as soon as possible. Their average stay is not 
 above a year, during w r hich time the refractory lad may 
 be partially trained, if at all. He is then placed out at 
 work and looked after outside under a good system of 
 parole and visitation. It will be found less necessary 
 to shorten the stay of boys under the cottage than 
 under the congregate system which has heretofore 
 obtained. 
 
LYMAN SCHOOL FOR BOYS. 29 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE LYMAN SCHOOL FOR BOYS. 
 
 This institution is at Westboro, Massachusetts, a few 
 miles out from Worcester, and was established as long 
 ago as 1848. It was under the congregate system at 
 first, as were all institutions of this class, but as long 
 ago as 1861 it began to change to the cottage plan, 
 completing the change in 1885. There are now eleven 
 cottages, each holding 30 to 38 boys, a house father 
 and mother and one teacher as a boarder. There are 
 some, and should be as many as ten, single rooms in 
 each cottage to be earned by good conduct. The rest 
 sleep in dormitories. 
 
 Well Sifted Out No lad is admitted to this school 
 \vho has not made for himself an institutional record. 
 The aim is, not to get boys into the school, but to keep 
 them out if possible and to get them out as soon as 
 possible. Therefore, no boy enters the Lyman school 
 until the probation officer gives him up as a bad job 
 and not until the law has done all it can do to enforce 
 parental responsibility. If lads are committed as young 
 as twelve years of age they are not brought directly 
 to the institution, but are sent to a detention home 
 twelve miles away, where they are left in the custody 
 of a good man and woman, a good teacher and one or 
 two attendants, with the view of straightening them 
 up there if possible. In many if not most cases it is 
 possible, and the youngsters are not brought to the 
 reform school at all. 
 
 Boarded Out Massachusetts has an elaborate and 
 successful boarding-out system for delinquent as well 
 as dependent children. It pays $2 per week board and 
 allows $25 per year for clothes. These younger delin 
 quents are placed with reputable farmers at this price, 
 where they are sent to the public school and to church 
 
30 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 and are taught to work between times. They are 
 kindly but firmly treated and, in most instances, are 
 given their first real chance to be something, and that 
 chance suffices. 
 
 Sloyd and Garden If the lad committed is over 
 twelve, or if the detention home above referred to did 
 not reform him, he is brought to the institution and 
 assigned to a cottage according to his "youth" rather 
 than according to his age, for there is a difference in 
 point of attainment. For half the day he works In the 
 open air or in the sloyd room and for half a day he goes 
 to school, but a constant attempt is made to get at the 
 intellectual through the manual, and with much success. 
 I saw the autumnal remains of 325 school gardens, and 
 practically all of them had been successful. In winter 
 the structure of leaves and the mystery of germination 
 are taught with unflagging zeal on the part of the 
 students, who watch the unfolding of nature s processes 
 with greatest interest. The sloyd teachers are women, 
 and are more successful than men teachers, because 
 they are able to take the whole boy into their hearts. 
 They not only teach him sloyd, but he must learn all 
 he can about the history of the tools and different 
 woods used and write original compositions about them. 
 This quickens the whole process into life and creates 
 that living interest without which there is no progress 
 worth mentioning. The farm and the dairy supple 
 ment the gardening, as the carpenter s shop and 
 cabinet-maker s supplement sloyd. It is surprising 
 how, by these methods, the almost uniformly blunted 
 intellects of these boys are quickened into sharpness 
 and stimulated to do things worth while. 
 
 The Discipline It is recognized by Superintendent 
 Chapin that a large measure of personal liberty is essen 
 tial to normal growth of character and, for this reason, 
 he trusts his charges a good deal. Occasionally a boy 
 runs away. If so he is generally caught and brought 
 back and he and his associates therebv learn a lesson 
 
LYMAN SCHOOL FOR BOYS. 31 
 
 in law not without value. If, however, a boy shows 
 himself to be an incorrigible runaway he is transferred 
 to Concord Reformatory, which, being a walled prison, 
 closely guarded, holds him. If ordinary .methods of 
 fatigue punishment do not suffice to correct bad con 
 duct, a little contrivance called the Jasli is applied 
 stingingly. It is made up of about ten inches of rubber 
 gas hose fastened to a pine stick with a leather string. 
 It does not weigh over four ounces handle and all, but 
 it serves its purpose well. If this does not meet re 
 quirements the refractory boy is not given over to 
 Satan to be tortured in hades until the remedial in 
 fluences of a young hickory switch have been thor 
 oughly tested. It has been known to work like a charm 
 where all else had failed, but its application is re 
 served as a dernier resort, and it probably is not the 
 hundredth bad boy who requires it. The military has 
 a good, but subordinate, place in the disciplinary 
 system. 
 
 The Home Tie Superintendent Chapin has found the 
 home tie extremely important to hold on to in redeem 
 ing a bad looy. A good many boys run away through 
 home-sickness. If they love home well enough to 
 behave at home they are placed on parole there and, 
 sometimes, are allowed to remain. The hope of going 
 home is held ever before them and they are kept in as 
 close touch with home as possible, unless the home is 
 in fact utterly unfit; but almost any home is better 
 than no home and the home is given the benefit of any 
 doubt that may exist. The severing of the home tic 
 makes savages of most men, and not less so of boys. 
 There is little reason to doubt that the crimes against 
 womanhood which young negroes have committed since 
 the war are directly attributable to this cause. As long 
 as negroes had homes on the old plantations the per 
 sons of white women in the "big house" were sacred 
 in their eyes, and the men folks were able to go to war 
 to fight against the freeing of the slaves, perfectly 
 secure in the knowledge that the slaves, against whoso 
 
32 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 freedom they were fighting, would preserve their white 
 mistresses and their families free from all harm. Not 
 all reform schools value the "home tie" as rationally 
 and usefully as does Lyman School for Boys. 
 
 The Parole System Although Lyman school has an 
 average attendance of only about 335 boys, whose 
 comings and goings amount to about 200 a year, Massa 
 chusetts thinks it worth Avhile to maintain four parole 
 officers to find homes for the lads who are ready to 
 go out and to visit them when they have gone* out. 
 For the year ending September 30, 1905, there went 
 out from the school boys to the number of about 300. 
 Of these, 142 were paroled to parents, 88 went to others, 
 and 49 were boarded out. The remainder ran away 
 and were not caught or were transferred to the Concord 
 Reformatory, either because of running away or cm 
 account of developing criminal tendencies. When 
 paroled the boys are visited several times a year by the 
 regular parole officers, usually until 21, although they 
 are allowed to make their own contracts for service 
 after reaching 18 years of age. All told, it costs only 
 about half as much to keep the boys out of the insti 
 tution as to keep them in it, and they are the better 
 for it. 
 
 A book the size of this one might easily be written 
 about the Lyman School for Boys. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE GLEN MILLS HOUSE OF REFUGE. 
 
 This is one of the model institutions of our country. 
 It is an hour s ride out of Philadelphia, is owned by a 
 self-perpetuating benevolent corporation, has 535 
 acres of land and has an investment of a round million 
 of dollars, but it takes only children committed to it 
 by the courts. The girls division is in Philadelphia, 
 having been divorced from the co-reformatory idea in 
 the light of fuller experience. 
 
GLEN MILLS HOl SK OF RKKTGE. -U 
 
 Trades and Agriculture This is primarily a trades 
 school, although a good deal of profitable farm work 
 is done. No especial effort is made to teach agriculture 
 as a profession. About ten trades are taught and the 
 appliances for teaching are very good, but it has been 
 found that even if a boy learns a trade pretty thor 
 oughly he can not command a man s wages until he 
 has reached a man s age. A position as an advanced 
 apprentice is about as good a thing as a graduate can 
 hope for, even if he be ever so proficient, and some of 
 the graduates do become quite proficient. There are 
 about 700 boys in attendance. 
 
 The Cottage Plan The houses of refuge for the Glen 
 Mills boys consist of fifteen very handsome cottages, 
 housing about 50 boys under each roof. In classifying 
 them one absolute division is made, as at Rochester and 
 Lyman school, at puberty. Within the two subdivisions 
 thus made, the next divisions are made more as to 
 equality of size than age, and the final divisions with 
 regard to moral fiber. Each cottage is in charge of a 
 master and matron, and the master must be a teacher 
 of mechanics during the day. The requirements are 
 exacting. The pay for man and wife, with not more 
 than one child, ranges from $800 to $900 a year, with 
 house and board, lights and fuel found; but to meet 
 all requirements the house master has got to be a good 
 mechanic, and a good instructor in mechanics, and his 
 wife must be a good housekeeper and capable of com 
 manding the esteem and obedience of a family of fifty 
 bad boys. It looks at first thought as though these 
 exactions were b 4 eyond realization, but by a system of 
 careful selection, on the part of the superintendent 
 himself, absolute^ untouched by political or other 
 outside influence, the applicants being trained first as 
 reliefs, a working degree of success has been achieved. 
 This gives something of an idea of what the much 
 vaunted "cottage plan" requires for successful reali 
 zation. 
 
3 INSTITUTIONAL LIFK. 
 
 The Spirit of Glen Mills 1 found the spirit and policy 
 of the Glen Mills institution more noteworthy for its 
 own intelligence and excellence than for patience with 
 other systems maintained by other institutions insti 
 tutions, by the way, producing aboiit the same results, 
 and for reasons set forth in the chapter on "What 
 Makes Bad Boys Good." The essential elements of 
 ! the Glen Mills idea are, first, the making of full use of 
 i the home instinct. Boys are required to write home 
 at least once a month, and may receive visits from home 
 once a month, and, in all ways, the boy is reminded of 
 home life when possible. 
 
 Second, for reformatory or, as Superintendent Nie- 
 becker terms it, "formatory," influence great reliance 
 is placed upon the personality of the personnel of 
 house masters and matrons, teachers and such other 
 officials as are engaged in the work of the institution. 
 No loose talk, unmannerly or degrading influences are 
 allowed, and the treatment of the lads must be such as 
 is expected from them. All the employes are high- 
 grade people. 
 
 Third, discipline is en masse, and for the reason that 
 the bad boy is, as elsewhere more fully explained, 
 preeminently and even exasperatingly an individualist, 
 who must learn that concessions from absolute liberty 
 of action must be made for the common good of the 
 social whole. The boy can not learn this anywhere 
 else so well as under a congregate system of life and 
 discipline. There he gets the social instinct hustled or 
 punched into him. 
 
 Fourth, and finally, education at Glen Mills is in 
 severalty. If the congregate mass were too great this 
 could not be accomplished, but by having a good num 
 ber of teachers, and limiting the sizes of classes to fif 
 teen or sixteen, and having only half-day attendance 
 upon the schools of letters, much individual work can 
 be done. In short, the educational system at Glen Mills 
 approximates as closely as possible to that of the 
 "little red school house,", where the boy goes into a 
 
(!LKN MILLS HOUSE OK UKFIXJK. :{f> 
 
 higher class when lie is ready and promotions are not 
 made by classes. 
 
 Parole and Discharge Lads are committed to the 
 House of Refuge until their majority, but a very earnest 
 and attentive lad may earn his way out in eighteen 
 months. The average time is two years and one month. 
 At Lyman school it is 20.39 months. It may be re 
 membered that at Rochester it was thought best to get 
 the boy out if possible in one year. The same was held 
 to be true at the Catholic Protectory at Westchester, 
 New York. It seems to me that both policies are well 
 grounded. Under the enlarged congregate system the 
 individualistic boy is likely to have learned his lesson 
 in social concession within a year. After that, if he 
 remains, he is likely to lose his power of self-direction 
 and become absorbed by the mass spirit. In a modified 
 congregate-cottage system, as at Lyman and Glen Mills. 
 this last danger is not so serious but that the advan 
 tages to be gained by remaining longer and learning 
 more outweigh the danger. I find myself in substantial 
 agreement with both contentions. 
 
 Discipline Military drill is maintained at Glen Mills 
 for the sake of the drill, but militarism does not domi 
 nate. Physical training under a most competent 
 director exerts an important influence in straightening 
 up characters as well as bodies, and these trainings 
 are stimulated by competitive athletic exercises at fre 
 quent intervals. Sloyd is employed to good advantage 
 with the younger lads, but the older boys are worked 
 into practical manufacture as soon as possible. They 
 like to do real things, and at least some of their build 
 ings have been erected by them. Glen Mills does not 
 exactly have a merit system, but it does have a demerit 
 system, and daily charges are made against each lad s 
 record where they are deserved. The extreme penalty 
 is the application of the rattan, which is infrequent, 
 deprivation of privileges being ordinarily sufficient to 
 secure good behavior. Want of character is what 
 
< INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 brought the lads to the institution, and they are sent 
 out as soon as there is reason to believe them capable 
 of intelligent and honest self-direction. There are 
 three parole officers who visit those who have gone 
 out, and the percentage of redemptions ranks up with 
 the best of similar institutions. 
 
 The location of the House of Refuge is both beautiful 
 and healthful, and my visit to the institution was as 
 agreeable as I hope it will be profitable. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 THE GEORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC. 
 
 This is something new under the sun in the way of 
 a reformatory institution. It is beautifully located at 
 Freeville, in Central New York, over against one of 
 those incomparable New York slopes that one never 
 tires of, leaning gently up against the horizon. It 
 commands a fine prospect and affords fair soil for 
 farming. The area controlled by the institution com 
 prises 350 acres, of which 200 acres are cultivated by 
 the boys of the institution. 
 
 "Daddy" The founder of the institution, Mr. W. R. 
 George, belongs in a class all by himself. To all of the 
 children under his care he is known only as "Daddy," 
 as familiarly known as ever any daddy was. The first 
 impression made upon meeting this gentleman is that 
 one has encountered a very mellow personality, a fad 
 dist if not a giisher, but a little further acquaintance 
 persuades one that although "Daddy" may be very 
 soft and pliable on the exterior it is not very far under 
 the skin to where a sound, and quite inflexible granite 
 manhood exists. He was a police officer in New York 
 when Theodore Roosevelt was police commissioner in 
 that city. He had a roving commission and busied 
 himself with studying the delinquent boy in his lair, 
 with special reference to "de head of de gang." He 
 
(iKORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC. ^ 
 
 also interested himself in the deprivations of childhood 
 in the congested districts, and his first work for the 
 amelioration of delinquent and dependent childhood 
 was to .organize summer vacation trips to the home of 
 his own boyhood out at Freeville. 
 
 It was out of this experience that Mr. George evolved 
 his Junior Republic idea. The crucial issue is whether 
 the success of the enterprise is due to Mr. George or 
 to his system. He thinks that it is due to his system. 
 I am inclined to the opinion that it is to Mr. George 
 and his extraordinary personality. 
 
 Mr. George is himself an athlete, and he requires the 
 maintenance of no artificial atmosphere of dignity to 
 surround him in order to preserve the respect as well 
 as the love of all his charges. They are at liberty to 
 take hold of him at any time, catch as catch can, to 
 stroke his chin and ruffle his hair with the fond famil 
 iarity of the wife of his bosom, or to make him knuckle 
 down in a contest of finger power, which, I think, no 
 one of them has ever been able to accomplish. A citizen 
 of Freeville related to me this characteristic incident : 
 While lying prone upon the lawn five of his husky foot 
 ball players took advantage of the opportunity to 
 jump on to "Daddy" to hold him down. He tossed 
 one off with one arm, a second with the other and got 
 up with three on his back. No trouble for that kind 
 of a specimen of physical manhood to command the 
 respect of adolescent humanity! 
 
 For Boys and Girls Both On the day of my visit 
 the Junior Republic numbered 84 boys and 45 girls. 
 They range from 14 years up to 17 or 18, and some of 
 the older ones may be nearing one-and-twenty. The 
 girls have their own hotel, but they do the work for 
 the other hotels also. They all go to school half a day 
 and work the other half, and with as much freedom as 
 in the public schools, except that no girl is allowed out 
 of doors after dusk unattended by an older woman. 
 There have been some minor scandals because of the 
 
38 JNSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 co-educational feature, but, as Mr. George declared, 
 not one to where there would have been a hundred 
 among the same persons outside, and yet no girl of 
 known immoral tendencies is admitted to the republic. 
 
 The Raw Material Mr. George divides delinquent 
 humanity into three general classes. In the first he 
 puts those who have robust wills and won ts. They 
 are headstrong and not unlikely to be stubborn. In 
 the ordinary reformatory institution they are not un 
 likely to prove intractable and to be turned over to 
 penal institutions as being incorrigible. Mr. George 
 especially desires to secure the custody of persons of 
 this class, because he believes that, under favoring 
 conditions, something the better worth while can be 
 made out of them. The material is of the most valu 
 able sort, but is being spoiled in the making. 
 
 A second class are not essentially bad, but lack 
 motive power. Neither their wills nor their won ts are 
 especially strong, but they are inclined to deceive and 
 to steal. In such cases he searches for a dominating 
 trend in a right direction, toward mechanics, music, 
 art or whatever promises most, and, by assiduous culti 
 vation of this faculty, he seeks to smother the criminal 
 tendency, which may be outgrown. 
 
 The third subdivision of delinquent humanity is made 
 up of those creatures of habit who do the things the.y 
 have been accustomed to do, whether good or evil. 
 Mr. George thinks that as these can be handled well 
 enough by ordinary reform schools he can better direct 
 his efforts to the first two classes and, by preference, 
 the first, commonly regarded as most difficult. 
 
 The System Mr. George s system of character form 
 ing or, reforming, is so simple as to go clear back to 
 the elemental impulses underlying all human society. 
 The first proposition is that there shall be nothing 
 without labor, but everything with it. Every new in 
 mate must pay for his board in advance or he does not 
 oat. He is at liberty to seek for work as soon as his 
 
(JKOIUJK -M NIOR KKL l BUC. 
 
 name lias been booked, but if lie has means he may 
 hire a room at a hotel in the colony, pay for his board 
 in advance and look about a bit. He may even borrow 
 of those who will lend, but if he begs he is arrested arid 
 thrown into jail upon a charge of vagrancy. The 
 vagrant w r orks on the republic chaingang, eats on a bare 
 table off tin dishes and sleeps in the splendid jail John 
 D. Rockefeller gave the cornerstone of the republic. 
 The raw recruit is not unlikely to spend half his time 
 for the first six months in jail, but when it finally 
 soaks into his consciousness that there is really "noth 
 ing without labor," he has been given a right start. 
 
 The Saving Grace of Property As soon as the raw 
 recruit gets out of jail and develops a determination 
 to work, his way is made easy. He will be allowed 
 $1.50 per week for going to school, and $4.50 to $6 
 per week for prentice work in any of the trades, all 
 payable in the aluminum money of the republic and re 
 deemable at the republic s store, hotels, and boarding- 
 houses. Now as soon as the New York "tough" secures 
 a room of his own and a little bunch of worldly pos 
 sessions which he has earned he is in favor of law and 
 order. 
 
 If all the sneak-thieves and pickpockets of New York 
 were marooned on an island and left to work out their 
 own destinies it would not be a fortnight before they 
 would be enacting strict laws against sneak-thievery 
 and pocket-picking and would enforce those laws by 
 doing some expeditious hanging. Property rights are 
 elemental and powerful factors in holding society 
 together, and the George Junior Republic has made a 
 fundamental use of those rights. 
 
 The Government Stripped of a few high sounding- 
 names, such as President, Secretary of State, Secretary 
 of the Treasury, etc., the government of the George 
 Junior Republic is that of a New England or New 
 York town. The legislative body consists of the whole 
 citizenry who are fortunate enough to be out of jail 
 
40 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 assembled in town meeting. The girls over 14 have 
 the same rights of citizenship as the boys, and the con 
 stitution allows a large liberty of home rule. In the 
 background is a veto power vested in Mr. George, but 
 he has used it very rarely if at all. He finds it better 
 to permit mistakes to be made, discovered and reme 
 died by the citizens themselves. 
 
 There is a court presided over by an elected judge, 
 which sits in a public hall once or twice a week for the 
 consideration of all infractions of the laws of the 
 republic, and it sits with gravity and deals with de 
 linquents with an almost unvarying soundness of judg 
 ment. There is also a court of appeal in the persons 
 of certain members of the management, but few de 
 cisions are reversed. In short, whatever any well- 
 ordered community will do under a given state of 
 circumstances to preserve order and defend property 
 is done in the George Junior Republic and by the regu 
 larly constituted authorities of that republic. 
 
 The Difference Outside, the strong-willed boy or 
 girl comes in conflict with laws which others have made. 
 Here one comes in contact with laws which he has him 
 self had a share in making. Outside, to be arrested by 
 a portly cop and taken to a court for trial, and into 
 the newspapers, possibly with portrait annexed, and 
 then sent to "do time" in some prison or reformatory, 
 is to become a petty hero with the gang, and is neces 
 sary to becoming the head of the gang. Here, to be 
 arrested by a boy policeman and brought before a boy 
 judge, and made to work on a boy chaingang under 
 boy supervision for a boy and girl republic, is not a 
 thing to boast about when back with the gang. It 
 takes the braggadocio all out of a fellow and gives him 
 a chance to see the better way. 
 
 The newcomer who vaunts of the bad things he has 
 done outside is set down as a suspicious character, and 
 if an offense is committed anywhere in the republic, 
 he is forthwith arrested on suspicion and throw r n into 
 jail pending investigation. An experience or two of 
 
GEORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC. 41 
 
 this kind puts a stop to boasting- of being a bad man, 
 and the lad tries to get into the good graces of the 
 community instead of being its ever-present victim. 
 The jail is, as already stated, much used by newcomers. 
 
 Large Liberty Allowed As soon as a newcomer be 
 comes a citizen, and has entered into the spirit of citi 
 zenship, he is permitted the largest measure of liberty. 
 He goes and comes as he pleases, remembering only that 
 he is a citizen of the republic and that he owes it an 
 honest allegiance. The school has now been graded 
 up so that it fits its graduates for college, and the lad 
 who has fitted himself for college, and wants to go, will 
 not be without some friend of the republic to furnish 
 the needful means, to be repaid when it can be, and a 
 number of young persons from the republic are now 
 taking college courses in different institutions of 
 learning. 
 
 A Thought-Inspiring Institution It is too much to 
 say that the George Junior Republic idea has demon 
 strated its superiority to all other ideas underlying re 
 formatory institutions. It has been feeling its way along, 
 is still poor and far from self-sustaining. I found that 
 managers of other reformatory institutions had little 
 faith in the George Junior experiment, but they also 
 had, generally speaking, little faith in any system of 
 reformation except their own. It is human to believe 
 that the best way to secure right action is to compel it, 
 but if the general government at Washington were to 
 seek to govern this country on principles applied by the 
 ordinary reform school its authority would be over 
 thrown in a fortnight. The American citizen will not 
 be governed by any one not of his own choosing, and 
 the headstrong boy will not. At the republic he is 
 allowed to become self-governing. I can not restrain 
 the thought that every reform school might be made 
 more democratic and less autocratic with profit, and it 
 is not impossible that the George Junior idea might 
 have some place in the social economy of prisons. 
 
42 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 Legislating in the Light of Experience I am loath to 
 leave this subject without making some reference to the 
 George Junior Republic s experience with the eight- 
 hour labor law. The agitation for an eight-hour labor 
 day struck the republic with full force and the boys 
 were all heartily in favor of it, but the girls protested 
 that they could not do their household work in eight 
 hours, when they had deducted therefrom four hours 
 devoted to attendance upon school, a universal sj^stem 
 for all workers at the republic. The boys contended 
 that the girls could do their part as well as the boys 
 if they only planned their work aright and worked 
 diligently while they worked, so the eight-hour day 
 was established by overwhelming vote after thorough 
 discussion. 
 
 The evening succeeding the morning when the eight- 
 hour law went into effect there was not a supper served 
 in the George Junior Republic. The girls saw that the 
 boys were all quitting work when the eight hours were 
 up and so they dropped their domestic duties right 
 where they were without having made a single supper 
 ready. They acted fairly, for, as they had prepared 
 no suppers for the boys, neither had they for them 
 selves, and all retired at night with only such cold 
 comfort to sustain them as the remains of former meals 
 put away in the cupboards could afford. 
 
 This practical working of the eight-hour law sufficed 
 without further experimentation and the legislative 
 body of the republic was called into immediate and 
 extraordinary session and the law repealed without a 
 dissenting voice. Since then the citizens of the George 
 Junior Republic have worked until their work was 
 done without reference to whether the working day 
 consisted of eight hours or nine or even ten. A closed 
 social circle like this republic is not at all a bad place 
 in which to test the practicability of economic theories 
 of questionable soundness, and the eight-hour idea is 
 not the only one that has been subjected to a convincing 
 experience since the republic was established. 
 
MK MICAN INDUSTRIAL HOME FOR GIRLS. )^ 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 MICHIGAN INDUSTRIAL HOME FOR GIRLS. 
 
 Before visiting the above-mentioned institution I 
 had conceived the idea, more perhaps by processes of 
 a priori reasoning than from actual observation and 
 experience, tha t a state is by nature poorly equipped to 
 undertake the reformation of a wayward girl, but this 
 institution, and some others I have seen, have dem 
 onstrated that the state can do the work as well as any 
 other organization, provided always that it will turn 
 the job over to a good, capable woman, sustain her 
 efforts and let her alone. 
 
 Success Achieved Michigan has succeeded by turn 
 ing the task over to Mrs. Lucy M. Sickels, a capable 
 and good woman, but a woman with a mind of her own 
 and very definite ideas of what she wants to do and 
 why she wants to do it. The Board of Guardians under 
 whose general directions she works, strives to forward 
 rather than to thwart her efforts, and she has entire 
 liberty of choice in making the selection of her sub 
 ordinates. This is the crucial point. Without this no 
 good thing can come out of any reformatory institution. 
 
 The Plant I found at this little colony, a mile out of 
 the attractive town of Adrian, a population of 350 girls 
 between the ages of 10 and 18 years, all of whom had 
 been incorrigible so far as home and other discipline 
 is concerned. Nearly all had become unchaste, and 
 enough of them to fill one cottage had been taken out 
 of the redlight districts of cities. All. are committed 
 until twenty-one, unless sooner paroled or discharged, 
 and are made ready for paroling and discharging as 
 soon as possible. The Home occupies 116 acres of good 
 land, upon which have been erected eight handsome 
 cottages, an administration building, school house, 
 hospital, and a chapel or general assembly room. The 
 cottages cost about $20,000 each, and each one accom- 
 
44 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 modates from 45 to 70 girls. Each girl is given a room 
 of her own and all are locked in at night by a mechan 
 ism, common to cell houses, whereby a whole line of 
 rooms may be locked at one time, yet each one may be 
 unlocked separately in case of need. This insures 
 against running away and gives a girl time to herself 
 to think things over. 
 
 The Personnel The staff of officers and attendants 
 is a strong one, and in its selection the superintendent 
 is given full authority and held to a full responsibility. 
 Each family has a matron and a housekeeper. There 
 are a number of ordinary school teachers and several 
 specially qualified industrial teachers, besides assist 
 ants, book-keepers, etc. All of these whom I met were 
 ladies of evident high character and capacity, education 
 and refinement. 
 
 The Saving Graces In the first place, the girls are 
 well classified, and each family is held pretty closely 
 to itself. The little girls are separated out, the feeble 
 minded also (and there are some quite below the 
 normal line), then those who had been prostitutes, 
 and, finally, further classification is by temperament, 
 behavior and age. This prevents undoing the good that 
 is done. 
 
 The atmosphere of the place is one of industry. The 
 girls are doing, or learning to do, most of the time. 
 Their average age of admission is 15 years and their 
 average school grade upon entering, the third. Hence 
 there is a good deal of school work to be done and the 
 completion of the fourth grade at least is exacted as a 
 condition precedent to going out on parole. The edu 
 cational equipment, however, carries those who can 
 take it through the first year of the high school. 
 
 Cooking The cooking school is an excellent feature 
 and each girl takes a course requiring three and one 
 half hours a day for four months for completion, after 
 which the girl does cooking in her own family cottage 
 
MICHIGAN INDUSTRIAL HOMK FOR GIRLS. 4f> 
 
 until utilization of the scientific knowledge she has 
 gained becomes second nature to her. I have not seen 
 a better or more intelligently equipped cooking class 
 than this, and its results are of the greatest practical 
 value. 
 
 Sewing Plain sewing is another course which takes 
 three and one half hours a day for six days in the week 
 during a period of four months. Following this, for 
 those who have ability to take it, is a course of similar 
 duration in dress making, cutting and fitting. The 
 naughty girls of Michigan have not their development 
 hampered as have those of California by a foolish law 
 prohibiting the making of officers clothing or sewing 
 for outside customers. All of the thirty-five officers 
 have their clothes made by the dressmaking class, at 
 cost, and, if this does not take up all the time, a limited 
 number of orders are taken from the town of Adrian 
 for the girls to practice on at about half the customary 
 expert rates. By this means the salary of the teacher 
 is paid and the girls earn a little something themselves. 
 The time from 7 o clock to 10:30 and froiii 1 to 4 is 
 state time. Overtime work goes to the benefit of the 
 girls, and they appreciate it. 
 
 Music Music has an important place in the Michi 
 gan scheme of reformation. The school at Adrian has 
 an orchestra and a band, and every girl capable of it 
 lias a chance to learn some real accomplishment. They 
 are eager for this form of training and it stimulates 
 them to efforts at self-improvement in other lines, for 
 it gives them self-respect, the beginning of all good 
 attainment. 
 
 Gardening A good gardener is employed at Adrian, 
 almost the only man on the place, unless it be the 
 engineer and dairyman, whom I did not run across. 
 Girls are taught to slip and bud, plant and propagate, 
 flowers of all kinds, and they have made the campus 
 very bright and attractive. They show an eager spirit, 
 and those who are the better for being out of doors are 
 
4H INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 encouraged to go out, under the care of the gardener, 
 as much as possible. 
 
 Other Influences The value of religious instruction 
 is not overlooked, but it is not as much relied on as 
 industry and the personalities of the officers and at 
 tendants, and for the reason that not many, at the be 
 ginning, seem capable of appreciating the value of the 
 religious life. It is something that must be grown into. 
 There is a good deal of concerted repetition of sound 
 moralities, philosophies and resolutions, expressed in 
 verse or proverbs, and the drilling of these into thought 
 less heads exerts an influence by no means unimportant. 
 
 All things considered, I regard this as one of the most 
 successful public institutions I visited while on my 
 pilgrimage, and I believe that if California were to 
 follow a similar policy it would achieve similar results. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 ILLINOIS TRAINING SCHOOL FOR GIRLS. 
 
 I wish I had the power and privilege of embellishing 
 this volume just at this place with a finely engraved 
 portrait of Mrs. Ophelia L. Amigh, superintendent of 
 this school, and not only superintendent of the school 
 but of her board of trustees and of several governors of 
 Illinois, as well as innumerable politicians who would 
 have thwarted her plans if she would have permitted 
 them to do so. She is a materialization of feminine (not 
 masculine), long-suffering, enduring, intelligent, hope 
 ful, trustful determination to do the right thing herself 
 and have the right thing done by others. She is sane, 
 self-possessed, benignant, dignified, capable. She has a 
 mind of her own without having a disagreeable temper. 
 She is even diplomatic, but she is quite capable of facing 
 any kind of opposition and fighting it to a finish with 
 out tears or fears. God has made here and there such a 
 woman. They are to be had for superintendents of 
 
ILLINOIS TRAINING SCHOOL FOR GIRLS. 47 
 
 girls reform schools, and no reform school for girls 
 will be successful that has not much such a woman at 
 its head. 
 
 Cottage System Mrs. Amigh has ten families of girls 
 at the industrial Training School, on the banks of Fox 
 river at Geneva, a few hours ride out of Chicago. The 
 houses were not built for that, but she was determined 
 to have classification and segregation, so she made the 
 main building into flats and has a family in each flat. 
 She tries to approximate as closely as possible to the 
 private family, and therefore has no central laundry. 
 Each family has its own laundry and does its washing 
 by hand. It does all the rest of the work in much the 
 same way. The purpose is to fit the girls mainly for 
 domestic life on the farm, and they are taught to do 
 those things that homes on the farms mainly require 
 and by much the same system as would be followed in 
 an ordinary farmer s family. Everything that looks 
 like a frill is cut off. 
 
 The Plant There are 91 acres of land in the indus 
 trial farm, and, after the plowing is done, quite a good 
 deal of the cultivating is done by the girls. The head 
 gardener is a woman and the girls grow all the vege 
 tables required, and husk all the corn. Many of them 
 come to the school run down in health and the outdoor 
 work builds them up as nothing else could. More cot 
 tages and other buildings are needed, as there is a 
 constant demand for the care of more than the 325 
 girls in the institution on the occasion of my visit. 
 Illinois has not made nearly as good provision for its 
 wayward girls as Michigan has, though the demand for 
 their care is probably greater. 
 
 The School As in all other institutions so far as I 
 know, a half day is given to schooling and a half day 
 to industrial work. Only three teachers are employed 
 and the school is held in the congregate system. The 
 majority of girls who come in are in the second or 
 
48 INSTITUTIONAL TJFE. 
 
 third grades as classified in the public school system, 
 and they are taken through the eighth grade if possible, 
 but not all can go that far without staying too long. 
 The aim is to make the girls fit for parole in two years 
 and then to put them out to service in approved 
 families. 
 
 The Utility of Play Mrs. Amigh makes out-of-door 
 play, basketball and baseball, etc., a means for growth 
 in grace. Most of the girls, when they come to her, do 
 not know how to play any sort of game that ever was, 
 and the result is stupidity. A summer s course in 
 physical play in the open air sharpens their wits as 
 much as anything that can be done for the girls in her 
 care. 
 
 Industries These mainly consist in taking care of 
 the homes of the different families- and of the clothes of 
 the girls. Dressmaking is taught by a special teacher, 
 but there isn t any cooking school. The superintendent, 
 wise as she is in most things, regards the cooking school 
 as a fad. It isn t, and she is making a mistake. She 
 does not do as much in the way of giving the girls 
 accomplishments as is done in the Michigan school, 
 which I think also a mistake, but on the whole Mrs. 
 Amigh makes as few mistakes as any one I know in 
 the work of reforming naughty girls, or boys either, 
 and must be left to find her way to the better things 
 by processes of her own. She will arrive if she lives 
 long enough, for she is no back number or finished 
 product. 
 
 Discipline Mrs. Amigh s system of discipline con 
 sists first in a square deal all around, in uniform kind 
 ness and uniform firmness, in deprivation of privileges 
 for minor offenses, in applications of the rubber shoe 
 across the maternal knee when necessity requires, in a 
 "strong room" in the basement where a refractory girl 
 may spend a night or two in lonely contemplation, and 
 in a boxed-in chair of meditation which leaves only the 
 
CONNECTICUT INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL FOR GIRLS. 4!) 
 
 head sticking out above the encompassing boards. 
 Its monotony of position and loneliness of location are 
 wonderfully argumentative for good behavior. 
 
 Little of System If this institution had a more 
 elaborated system of reformation it would furnish more 
 to write about, but the more I have looked into the 
 matter the less important system seems to me to be. 
 If this institution had at its head a less marked and 
 capable personality it would need more of system to 
 save it from failure, but having Mrs. Ophelia Amigh 
 it needs ever so little system for redeeming the re 
 deemable to decent and useful life. I have no manner 
 of doubt that her averages of reformation will range 
 abreast of the best, but such things are difficult of 
 being figured out in percentages. The public mind can 
 grasp a percentage, or a per capita, easier than it can 
 lay hold of a well-rounded fact, but the expert mind 
 turns away from percentage columns with a tolerably 
 well-founded incredulity. 
 
 It is worthy of note that two girls in this institution, 
 working only a part of the time, with two knitting 
 machines, costing $24 each, make all the hosiery that 
 the 325 girls require for summer and winter, and it 
 took them only two or three days to learn to run the 
 machines glibly. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 CONNECTICUT INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL FOR GIRLS. 
 
 This institution is at Middletown and enjoys a repu 
 tation in sociological circles second to none other in 
 the country. On the day of my visit there were 279 
 girls in attendance. They are received between the 
 ages of 8 and 16, to be retained under the guardianship 
 of the institution until 21 years of age. The institution 
 is conducted under the guidance of a self-perpetuating 
 benevolent corporation, and, although the Governor, 
 
 3 
 
50 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 Lieutenant-Governor and Secretary of State are 011 the 
 board of managers, they are not in full control and 
 the management of the school is entirely outside of 
 political influence. 
 
 A Distinctive Feature Connecticut is not satisfied 
 with the mere task of undertaking to reform bad girls. 
 It goes farther and undertakes to shelter those in 
 danger of becoming bad, and therefore commits to the 
 institution, not alone girls who have become unchaste 
 and incorrigible, but also those who, by their ungov- 
 erned conduct and dangerous situation in life, are 
 likely to become lewd and generally demoralized. As 
 a result of this policy, of the 279 girls in the institution 
 on the day of my visit, not more than forty had ever 
 been unchaste. The rest were in danger and were taken 
 in charge by the state after exhausting the pow r ers and 
 obligations of parental authority. This is about the 
 wisest bit of preventive policy it was my good fortune 
 to come across. 
 
 Classification It is hardly necessary. to say that such 
 girls as had lived lewd lives were carefully separated 
 from the others. They have one of the eight cottages 
 to themselves, and 67 per cent of those of this class who 
 have gone out from the institution have done, and are 
 doing, well. The first classification separates from the 
 rest such girls as are 8 to 12 years of age. Then there 
 is a disciplinary cottage for those who are not readily 
 governed. The unchaste, as above stated, are given a 
 cottage to themselves. As for the remainder, they are 
 distributed into families according to size, temperament 
 and convenience of being disposed of. 
 
 The State Pays The plant is the private property of 
 the corporation, but for maintenance the state of Con 
 necticut pays $3.50 per week for each girl kept in the 
 home. This supports them and just about keeps up 
 repairs, without furnishing anything for improving 
 the plant. This system is characteristic of Connecticut 
 
CONNECTICUT INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL FOR GIRLS. 51 
 
 benevolent institutions and is thought to work well, as 
 it keeps the management outside of the baneful in- 
 Hueiice of politieal control. The girls are maintained 
 in the school between three and four years. 
 
 Education (Jood schools are maintained through the 
 grammar grade. Eighty-five per cent of the girls ad 
 mitted come in in the fifth grade or below, mainly in 
 the second, third, and fourth grades. It is regrettable 
 that instruction is not given in instrumental music, and 
 that more attention is not given to affording girls some 
 of those accomplishments which, though perhaps more 
 showy than substantial, are ever so important to the 
 self-respect and charm of a girl s life. 
 
 Industrial Life The main effort is put upon prepara 
 tion for domestic life. There is a good cooking school, 
 and sewing is well taught, but not dressmaking. Laun 
 dry work and general housework are the staples. Some 
 attention is also given to gardening and to the rearing 
 of poultry with incubators and brooders. Considerable 
 attention is given to fancy work, but the trend of in 
 dustrial life and education is along so-called practical 
 lines. 
 
 The Results While it is difficult to estimate human 
 attainment in percentages, yet, roughly speaking, 91 
 per cent of those who have gone out from the institu 
 tion have so conducted themselves as to be entitled to 
 favorable mention. Sixty per cent have gone back to 
 their own people. The others have been provided with 
 homes and fair wages and are visited by the institution 
 visitor, and also by a visitor commissioned by the State 
 Board of Charities and Corrections. It should be men 
 tioned here, however, that the institution does not 
 admit girls who have been confirmed prostitutes. 
 
 Some Causes Of the causes of lewdness the main one 
 has been a slipping of the feet under temptation that 
 was too strong, but not because of innate depravity. 
 
52 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 If not taken in hand very soon these are likely to pro 
 gress into common women of the community, if not 
 habitues of some redlight district, and also to acquire 
 the drinking habit. Of all difficult cases to reform the 
 girl who has the drinking habit is the hardest. There 
 is a small class of wayward girlhood born with evil 
 tendencies, but these tendencies may be outgrown and 
 overcome under proper treatment if the drink habit 
 be not added thereto. Finally, the next most numerous 
 class is made up of those who have bad fathers and 
 mothers and therefore are without standards of morality 
 of any sort. Their condition is deplorable. And yet, 
 as above stated, 67 per cent of all lewd girls, without 
 regard to causes, have, in the course of the last nineteen 
 years, been redeemed to useful and virtuous life. 
 
 A Man at the Head This reform school for girls is 
 successful notwithstanding the fact that it has a man 
 at its head. It were nearer right to say that it has the 
 Fairbank family, for Mr. and Mrs. Fairbank and their 
 son are all employed in the institution. Mrs. Fairbank 
 is perhaps as much a factor in the management as her 
 husband. She maintains a most constant and intimate 
 personal relation with the girls and is about as much 
 a mother to them as she could be were she in sole 
 charge. Besides, Mr. Fairbank is a most exceptional 
 man, and he has devoted a lifetime to the work of 
 saving bad boys and girls to useful life. The fact that 
 he and his wife have made a success of girl-saving does 
 not warrant the conclusion that it is not, in the main, 
 better to have such an institution in the charge of a 
 capable woman. 
 
NEW YORK JUVENILE ASYLUM. ">:{ 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 NEW YORK JUVENILE ASYLUM. 
 
 This institution, and the one mentioned in the next 
 chapter, partake of the nature of a reform sehool and of 
 an orphanage, performing a dual, and therefore doubly 
 valuable, service. The institution is over fifty years 
 old, and through its portals have gone out into the 
 world, the better for its ministrations, full forty thou 
 sand young persons. It is not a state institution, nor 
 yet metropolitan, but it does a much needed work for 
 the great city of New York and is mainly sustained by 
 allowances from New York city s treasury. It re 
 ceives $104 per year for each child under six years of 
 age and $110 for each child over six maintained, and 
 $15 per year in addition for educational work. 
 
 The Perfected Cottage Plan Until within the last 
 two years this institution was in New York city, but 
 it has recently moved out to a splendid table-land loca 
 tion on one of the fine old estates bordering the Hud 
 son, at Dobb s Ferry, where it has acquired 290 acres 
 of land admirably situated. In New York the institu 
 tion was conducted on the congregate system. Out 
 here it is inaugurating an ideal cottage system, or the 
 cottage system carried to its last analysis, and for this 
 reason it is especially worthy of consideration. 
 
 Each cottage is costing about $16,000 and furnishes 
 a home for twenty children, the boys in one part of the 
 tract and the girls in another, the whole having been 
 laid out admirably by a landscape gardener. Each 
 alternate cottage will be supplied with a dormitory in 
 which all the children will sleep, and each alternately 
 with twenty single rooms for honor children who have 
 earned the right to be in the first grade as to behavior. 
 I do not know any other institution where it has been 
 attempted to give children separate rooms, except at 
 
54 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 the George Junior Republic, where each citizen must 
 rent a room in a republic lodging-house or lodge in jail. 
 And I do not know any other institution where as few 
 as twenty children are assigned to one cottage. The 
 general rule is to have thirty to the cottage. This makes 
 the per capita cost of housing $ 800 per child, which is 
 pretty high for a benevolent institution to be erected 
 by benevolence, but it is expected that there will be 
 no trouble in securing memorial donations of special 
 cottages enough to meet all requirements. 
 
 At the time of my visit only sixteen cottages were in 
 commission, but the intent is .to push the building as 
 rapidly as possible, for the institution is not carrying 
 the load it formerly carried and the deficiency is felt 
 in New York. It used to care for a thousand children 
 and, come to cut the number down to 300, it throws a 
 heavy burden upon other institutions, especially the 
 Catholic Protectory at Westchester. 
 
 In the cases of the smaller children one house mother 
 to the cottage is thought to be sufficient, but with the 
 larger ones there is a house master and mother, man 
 and wife, the children doing most of the labor except 
 the cooking and laundry work. The cooking is done 
 at central stations and the food is carried to the several 
 cottages to be served. This will have the advantage 
 of cheapness, but the disadvantage of not bringing the 
 children into the mysteries of family cooking. This is 
 the only concession to the congregate idea that I 
 noticed. 
 
 Bound for the West About 125 children are annu 
 ally sent west and placed in families. These include 
 those who are free and fit to go. If they are not fit 
 they are made fit if surgical and medical skill can make 
 them so, but of that elsewhere. The children sent west 
 are placed and looked after by the Children s Home 
 Society of Chicago, under the direction of Dr. Hastings 
 H. Hart, and with entire satisfaction. Something fur 
 ther will also be said of this elsewhere. 
 
NEW YORK JUVENILE ASYLUM. OO 
 
 All Children Committed This institution does not 
 accept children unless the fact of dependency has been 
 judicially determined, which prevents a great deal of 
 imposition upon public bounty; but not all children 
 are committed to this institution because of being de 
 pendent. New York does not confine its interest in 
 childhood, as does California, to orphans, half orphans 
 and abandoned children. It takes in charge those who 
 have no proper guardianship even if they have both 
 parents living, and does it to prevent their growing up 
 to be criminals. It is cheaper to handle them as chil 
 dren than as adult criminals. 
 
 Children are also committed for being delinquent. 
 This would seem to make the school consist of three 
 classes of children the dependent, the delinquent, and 
 those likely to become dependent and delinquent 
 through having no proper guardianship but as a 
 matter of cold fact and common experience they are 
 all the same sort of children, are more or less dependent, 
 more or less delinquent and are more or less without 
 proper guardianship. It is perfectly safe to congregate 
 them so far as these attributes are concerned, but they 
 require careful separation on moral, intellectual and 
 other grounds. 
 
 The Mill System As a disciplinary agent what is 
 known as the mill system of reward is maintained at 
 this institution, as it is also at Lyman School. A child 
 is allowed a credit of 2 mills a day for good work in 
 school, 2 mills for good work in the industrial depart 
 ment, 4 mills for proper behavior in the cottage and 2 
 mills for personal appearance. This makes a total of 
 10 mills, or one cent for each day, or $3.65 for a year. 
 To make it seem more important the accounts are kept 
 in money ten times as valuable, and is banked and 
 checked out on that basis, but come to exchange it 
 into the currency of the country, it takes ten cents- of 
 juvenile money to be worth one cent of real money to 
 spend. Whatever it is, the child can have his balance 
 
56 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 at proper times to spend for what he wants. It gives 
 an idea of accounts and works well in stimulating good 
 behavior. 
 
 The Net Results Space will not permit going into 
 further detail. Of the 40,000 children who have passed 
 through the institution during the last fifty years, 
 33,000 went back to parents and relatives, over 6,500. 
 have been placed in western homes and some 460 others 
 are still under the jurisdiction of the institution but 
 are in western homes. Hereditary criminality has de 
 veloped in only about 2% per cent of the children cared 
 for. Between 94 and 95 per cent were sent to the insti 
 tution because of no proper training at home. The 
 average stay in the institution is twenty-one months. 
 
 The Future This will one day be a great institution. 
 When its sixteen cottages shall have been increased to 
 fifty, and other accessories in proportion, it will be 
 something worth careful study. Mr. C. D. Hilles, its 
 present superintendent, is far-seeing and liberal-minded 
 and I do not doubt that his own growth will keep pace 
 with the growth of the institution. Of the children 
 who have gone out during his four years of service 
 only 5 to 8 per cent have been sent back as being unfit 
 to stay out. This is certainly a good record for slum 
 children of Greater New York. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 CATHOLIC PROTECTORY AT WESTCHESTER. 
 
 This institution is of interest for many reasons, but 
 perhaps for none more than its being a frank illustra 
 tion of the congregate system of caring for dependents 
 and delinquents, most of the dependents being delin 
 quents and most of the delinquents being more or less 
 dependent. Here, on the day of my visit, were 2621 
 children of both sexes. The girls to the number of 600 
 
CATUOMC PROTECTORY AT \Y KST< I I KSTKll. 57 
 
 or more, and about 200 small boys, were in the hands 
 of the sisters in an auxiliary institution at a little 
 distance, but on the same farm of 150 acres. All the 
 rest were in the male department and classified as well 
 as possible as to age, size and attainment. The male 
 department is in the hands of the Christian Brother 
 hood, of which organization there were 75 brothers 
 engaged in the work. The girls and little boys require 
 the care of 45 sisters. 
 
 Plenty of Playgrounds Long before the beginning 
 of the children s playground idea this institution had 
 established five large playgrounds for the boys and 
 two for the girls, and they are as much regarded as 
 elements of growth in grace and understanding as any 
 other department of the institution. The children are 
 all given plenty of time for play in the open air and 
 their play is encouraged, but it is also supervised to see 
 that there is fair play and fair treatment. By having 
 so many playgrounds, and by dividing the players into 
 details, a good degree of segregation is maintained even 
 in a congregate system. 
 
 The School This is a most important feature, for 
 almost if not quite half of the boys sent to the Pro 
 tectory are upon their arrival unable to read or write. 
 They come from the more squalid sections of New York 
 and have been almost wholly neglected, and every 
 effort is made to interest them in the common branches. 
 By dividing the time between study, play and indus 
 trial effort fatigue is prevented in any department and 
 interest is the more easily stimulated and maintained. 
 These Christian Brothers are indeed very close to the 
 elemental problem of primitive humanity, and the at 
 mosphere seemed to me to be one of intelligent and 
 enduring effort if not exactly of a buoyant and bound 
 less enthusiasm. The belief in an innate depravity 
 seems to detract something from the spirit of hopeful 
 ness with which those who do not share that belief are 
 able to sustain themselves. 
 
58 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 Industrial Training I don t know how many trades, 
 or parts of trades, are taught at the Catholic Protectory, 
 but certainly a good many. The institution is neither 
 a factory nor a trade school, strictly speaking, but the 
 management manages to get about two hours of deft 
 finger work out of each of its inmates in the course of 
 each working day. Those who remain long enough 
 get well on toward a completed apprenticeship, and 
 those who do not at least learn to handle themselves 
 and learn how to do some useful thing fairly well. At 
 any rate the lads become habituated to the idea that 
 this is a world of work, and most of them become recon 
 ciled to it. 
 
 American Sloyd This is a leading feature in the 
 education of a good portion of the boys, and not a few 
 of them discover themselves w r hile in that department. 
 I was not so favorably impressed with the models used, 
 or with their progressive character, but methods are 
 not so important as results, and of the results there 
 can be no question. As stated above, many a lad has 
 found himself there. 
 
 Domestic Art and Science The sisters are doing 
 fully as much for the girls as the brothers are for the 
 boys. They have good cooking and sewing schools. 
 and plenty of housekeeping to keep the girls busy when 
 they are not at their studies or taking their religious 
 instruction, a regular feature in both departments. 
 
 Music Instrumental music and, I believe, vocal also, 
 are given good places in the course of instruction, and 
 a fine band and orchestra are maintained. One secret 
 of reforming a bad child is to find out if possible what 
 good thing that child likes to do, and then use that as 
 a handle with which to lay hold of the rest of the child. 
 I think that the Catholic brothers and sisters have 
 grasped this idea more fully than many Protestant 
 workers in the same cause. It is a valuable and tactful 
 aid. 
 
CATHOLIC PROTECTORY AT WESTCHESTER. 59 
 
 * 
 
 Institutionalization Rather more, on the whole, is 
 made of the quality of institutionalization than the facts 
 warrant, but there is such a thing. It is not wholly 
 bad or wholly good, but a little of it can not be very 
 bad and may be very good. In the cases of these boys 
 and girls from the slums of New York it is about their 
 first need. They have been individualized to the point 
 of savagery. To round them up and band them to 
 gether under company discipline is what they need 
 most, and if they are not too long under that system 
 they will gain much good and little evil from it. It will 
 change them from anti-social to more or less social 
 beings, and the older ones rarely remain longer than a 
 year, or at most two years, at the Protectory. This stay 
 under such conditions can not hurt them. 
 
 Paroled and Placed Out Nearly all the boys have 
 relatives willing enough to take them back and find 
 homes for them when they are big enough to work, have 
 been weaned from their evil practices and are able to 
 earn something, so most of the discharges are to rela 
 tives. But there remain quite a number for whom 
 homes must be found, and this work is done by Brother 
 Barnabas, whom I was so unfortunate as not to see. He 
 tries to place his charges on farms out in the state of 
 New York, but those who are not fitted for this are 
 brought into the city and work found for them there. 
 
 St. Philip s Home This brings me to this institution, 
 also under the care of Brother Barnabas, who has fitted 
 up a four-story building for a hotel for working boys. 
 It is made as homelike as possible, with a chapel and 
 reading-rooms and comfortable dormitories, and here 
 he tucks the recently paroled lads under his fatherly 
 wing and finds work for them and keeps in touch with 
 them until they have risen high enough on the indus 
 trial ladder to become fully self-sustaining, when they 
 must give place to more recruits on the waiting list. 
 
()() INSTITUTIONAL IAFK. 
 
 Looking for a Farm The plant at Westchester is 
 too great to be cast aside. The improvements on the 
 ground cost $1,500,000. Nevertheless, the directors are 
 looking for a farm, which can be used as an auxiliary 
 if not as a substitute for the Protectory as it now is. 
 I think that if they could find something like Father 
 Crowley s farm at Rutherford it would be about what 
 they are looking for, but where outside of California 
 can such a property as that be found? 
 
 CHAPTER XYIL 
 THE DEPENDENT CHILD. 
 
 In the final analysis the state is the ultimate guar 
 dian of every child in the state. In fact, the state is the 
 ultimate guardian of every person in the state, old or 
 young. The state may take any of us and put us into 
 its army to be shot at or wherever it has use for us. 
 The individual exists for the whole as he does also for 
 the existence of the species. As a matter of sound 
 policy, therefore, society permits parents to enjoy their 
 own children and be responsible for them, as it also 
 permits individuals to enjoy individual liberty of 
 going and coming, planning and doing, but if an occa 
 sion arises where state authority must interfere in 
 order to preserve its own welfare the right to do so can 
 not be questioned. 
 
 Now with this right of a state goes the duty on the 
 part of the state to exercise that right when the com 
 mon welfare requires it. These conclusions are ele 
 mental, and it would be a good thing if they were to so 
 sink into the public consciousness as to be productive 
 of many good things to children whose parents neglect 
 or inadequately provide for and educate them. Many 
 parents suppose that their children are their own to do 
 what they are of a mind to with, and that it is nobody s 
 business but their own what they do with them. They 
 are mistaken. It is everybody s business. 
 
THE DEPENDENT CHILD. 61 
 
 What Is a Dependent Child? A dependent child is 
 one who has no proper person to take proper care of it. 
 California recognizes only three classes of these as 
 being entitled to" state protection the_whole . prph an , 
 ^e half orphan and the abandoned child. This leayes 
 
 the halt orpii 
 
 quite a number to be looked ont for as best the^jn ay 
 be, without state interest being manifested. Most east 
 ern states make no such distinctions. They regard any 
 child as a proper subject for state care if it be in fact 
 dependent, no matter what the cause of dependency. 
 There are children with both parents living who are 
 just as dependent as other children who have no parents 
 living. Parents who are of no account are no betten 
 than dead parents. 
 
 Indeterminate Dependency Dependency is not often 
 complete and permanent. Even a whole orphan gen 
 erally has relatives who will lay claim to it when it is 
 old enough to have an earning capacity, but who do 
 not want to be burdened with it so long as it is a 
 burden. Some states compel grandparents, brothers 
 and sisters to take care of dependent children by suits 
 at law. This policy greatly lightens the public burden, 
 but leaves the welfare of the child open to serious 
 question. The unwelcome child is not likely to be a 
 coddled child, and any policy that does not look first 
 of all to the welfare of the child is not a true policy. 
 
 The Half Orphan Then, there are many dependent 
 children who require to be tided over a period of ad 
 versity until a surviving parent can develop an earn 
 ing capacity sufficient to warrant the reassumption of 
 parental obligation. This is the case with the larger 
 part of the children whom the State of California is 
 helping to support. In no case should this support be 
 extended after the surviving parent has become able 
 to support such child, but it is through the abuse of this 
 right of the child that California is put to its heaviest 
 expense. Indigeney should be the basis of state aid in 
 all cases where parents are morally fit to Vmvp 
 
62 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 of their children. Where they are not their children 
 should be taken from them utterly after exhaustion 
 of a probationary interval. Many a delinquent parent 
 has been redeemed to right living- through a threatened 
 deprivation of children. 
 
 The Abandoned Child California suffers great im 
 position through- a too liberal construction of the term 
 "abandoned child." It has probably sustained thou 
 sands of children during past years who were in no 
 proper sense abandoned, but only shirked. They were 
 sent to orphanages to be cared for when little, but 
 were reclaimed as soon as big enough to have an earn 
 ing capacity. 
 
 The word "abandoned" in its legal sense is pre 
 cisely w T hat its meaning is as given in the dictionary. 
 It is a child whose unnatural parents have gone off 
 and left it for a period of one year without making pro 
 vision for its support, If they have done this they have 
 lost all legal claim to and right over the child and 
 should be permitted to have no more to do with it 
 than with the child of a stranger, but lack of a judicial 
 determination of the fact of abandonment, and a sys- 
 temless system of discharging the state s duty to the 
 child, have permitted unnatural and irresponsible par 
 ents to reclaim children whose support they had 
 abandoned. 
 
 Obliging orphanages have received visits, and small 
 contributions, at intervals, from parents of children 
 whom they have steadily reported to the state as aban 
 doned and for whose support they have unhesitatingly 
 drawn $75 per year each from the state treasury. By 
 this means, mendicancy has been promoted and the 
 state mulcted to the extent of tens of thousands of dol 
 lars since the present method of extending state aid to 
 dependent childhood was put into operation. The only 
 complete remedy for this abuse 1 which has beeri^the 
 result of lax methods and not of deliberate intenl_to 
 defraud, lies in having the fact of dependency iudieiftlly 
 established. 
 
THE DEPENDENT CHILD. I). 
 
 Dependency Judicially Determined In most easteri 
 states the fact of dependency is judicially establishec 
 if the state is to bear any part of the cost of maintain 
 ing a dependent child. If the local town, or townshij 
 as we would call it, is to bear the cost the selectmei 
 may determine the fact of dependency, or if the count} 
 is to do it, then the supervisors of such county, or els< 
 the superintendent of the poor, may make the investi 
 gation and determine the fact. In all cases, I think, th< 
 body politic and corporate that is to bear the expense 
 determines the fact of dependency, the court repre 
 senting the interests of the commonwealth. 
 
 In California it is different. The forty-four orphan 
 ages practically determine the fact of dependency fo 
 those for whom they care, and the boards of super 
 visors of the several counties determine the fact fo 
 those to whom they grant outside relief, passing the 
 bill up to the state to be repaid. This system does no 
 conduce to economy or equality in the disposition o 
 the state dependent children s fund, and there is neec 
 for a judicial determination of all dependency fo 
 whose relief the state treasury is to be drawn upon 
 The present system tends to create more mendicanc; 
 than can be remedied b state bount. 
 
 Law Liberally Construed The State Board of 
 aminers, which audits the claims made against the 
 State Dependent Child Fund, has been humanely liberal 
 in its interpretation of the law. For instance, it has 
 classed as half orphans children in indigent circum 
 stances one of whose parents is confined in one of the 
 state s prisons or asylums for the insane during such 
 confinement. There may not be any specific law foi 
 this, but the necessities of children have seemed to 
 require it and in allowing it the quality of mercy ha* 
 not been strained. 
 
 Extend the Juvenile Court System California has 
 an excellent juvenile court system, on paper, and it is 
 working admirably in fact where adequate machinery 
 
 <X 
 
(U INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 is supplied for making it effective, but, as is the case 
 in many other instances, the state falls short, if it does 
 not fall down, in the attempt to execute its own laws. 
 Under the juvenile court law as it stands Los Angeles 
 is the only county supplied with a probation officer 
 paid from the public treasury to aid the juvenile court 
 in carrying into effect the laws regarding juvenile 
 dependents and delinquents, whereas every county in 
 the state needs the services of a probation officer and 
 most counties need to have their probation officers paid. 
 
 In order to make the juvenile court law effective 
 there is a deal of work for a probation officer to do 
 much more work than citizens generally can afford to 
 perform without being compensated reasonably for the 
 time devoted to that most important service. The 
 present method of selecting probation officers insures 
 that such selection shall be kept entirely outside of 
 political influence. All that is required is to make 
 provision for paying the probation officers, such a sum 
 as shall be reasonable under the circumstances con 
 trolling the work in each county, to put California on 
 a parity with any state in the Union with regard to its 
 care for dependent and delinquent childhood. 
 
 Were the fact of dependency established by the 
 juvenile court, sitting only as a juvenile court as the 
 law specifically provides, and by and with the aid of the 
 probation officer charged with the duty of making all 
 needed investigations into essential facts for the wise 
 guidance of the court, no taint of pauperism need 
 attach to the child beyond what is inseparable from 
 every case of public aid extended to private persons. 
 The court will sit as the state s authorized guardian 
 of every child found in need of protection by the 
 sheltering arms of the state, and the probation officer 
 will be the instrument of the juvenile court for carry 
 ing out the directions of the guardian regarding the 
 care of the state s dependent wards. It will be a 
 parental rather than a judicial relation subsisting 
 between court and child and splendidly calculated to 
 
WHAT CALIFORNIA IS DOING. ()f> 
 
 save the child from harm and the commonwealth from 
 imposition. 
 
 It is not so much more law that California needs in/ 
 this particular as greater efficiency in putting the Iaw| 
 into execution. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 WHAT CALIFORNIA IS DOING FOR DEPENDENT 
 CHILDREN. 
 
 There is a prevailing impression that dependent 
 childhood costs California a great deal more in propor 
 tion to population than it costs other states. It does 
 cost the state more, but it probably costs the taxpayers 
 less. In California dependent childhood is mainly a 
 state problem, as it should be. In most eastern states 
 it is a problem that confronts the taxpayer at every 
 turn through township, county, city and state. I found 
 no eastern state that cares for what children are cared 
 for by the state as cheaply per child as California cares 
 for her dependent children. 
 
 State care is preferable to township or county care, 
 because the interests of the child are better protected. 
 The dollar held up immediately before the eye of the 
 local taxpayer prevents his looking adown the vista 
 of time and seeing the future of the child as a public 
 problem. Per contra, a State Board of Charities and 
 Corrections, to whose charge this problem is in the 
 East mainly entrusted, remembers that the criminal 
 of the future is the child of to-day, and so concerns 
 itself with the ultimate consequences of a care-taking 
 policy more than with the dollar of immediate cost. 
 
 Number of Children Cared For For the fiscal year 
 ending June 30, 1905, there were 7301 children who 
 received state aid at some time during the year. Of 
 \these, 5283 were being maintained in the forty-four 
 existing orphanages and 2018 were aided through the 
 
66 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 boards of supervisors of the several counties. It is 
 worth while to note that the forty-four orphanages 
 together maintained 1230 other children for whose care 
 they received no state aid whatever. 
 
 Cost to the Orphanages From the best figures that 
 the State Board of Examiners could obtain from reports 
 made to them the average cost to the institutions 
 maintaining these children, for the half year endipg 
 June 30, 1905, was $53.05 per child. The state s 
 average share of this burden was $32.57 per child. 
 Of course some orphanages maintain a higher standard 
 of living than others, but it may be doubted if any 
 orphanage in California receives more from the state 
 than is required for the immediate care and feeding 
 of the children in its charge. The conducting of an 
 orphanage can not, so far as state aid is concerned, 
 be regarded as a gainful pursuit. If there be profit in 
 it it must be because of the opportunity offered for 
 soliciting funds outside. A better degree of state super 
 vision would prevent this abuse, as the exactions of a 
 charities indorsement committee in San Francisco have 
 already shut out -some such candidates for charities. 
 The benevolent public needs protection from imposi 
 tion, but I do not know any one of the forty-four 
 existing orphanages that has not a bona fide need for 
 aid far beyond that extended by the state. 
 
 The Help Employed There were 519 persons em 
 ployed at some time during the year in the care of the 
 children mentioned in the paragraph next but one 
 above, besides 198 other persons who gave their time 
 and labor without recompense. The total salaries paid 
 during the half year amounted to $87,119.66, or about 
 $28 per month each. The ratio on paper is one care 
 taker to each nine children, but this includes all manner 
 of workers, including care of land and garden, many 
 of whom were on the payroll for a short time only. 
 The real ratio of care-takers to children would come 
 nearer being one to fifteen. 
 
WHAT CALIFORNIA IS DOING. (17 
 
 What They Cost the State For the fiscal year ending 
 June 30, 1905, the State Treasurer cashed warrants 
 issued to the forty-four orphanages in the aggregate 
 sum of $337,459.07. The further sum of $96,242.34 was 
 paid to the several counties of the state for the support 
 of children aided in the homes of their surviving par 
 ents. This makes a grand total of $433,701.41 as the 
 annual expense of dependent childhood to the tax 
 payers of California. 
 
 It is worthy of note that the sum above mentioned 
 as having been paid to the forty-four orphanages 
 ($337,459.07) is, on an average, about $30,000 less than 
 has been annually paid to them during a number of 
 years previous to the incoming of the present state 
 administration. A closer surveillance, and a somewhat 
 more strict interpretation of the law, have resulted in 
 important economies without inflicting hardship upon 
 any child entitled by law to state aid. 
 
 There is, however, a tendency for the outside aid 
 extended through boards of supervisors to increase in 
 numbers of children aided and expense passed up to 
 the state for reimbursement. This aid in the home of 
 the surviving and worthy parent is the best form of aid 
 that can be extended, but whatever aid is extended in 
 such cases should be based on the principle of "as much 
 as is needed and no more, as long as needed and no 
 longer," for the prevention of hardship to the child. 
 
 Again, a judicial determination of the fact of de 
 pendency, and a judicial fixing of the degree of de 
 pendency also, would work hardship to no one and 
 prove a just economy to the state. It is not the state 
 policy regarding dependent childhood that needs to be 
 reformed so much as the method of executing that, 
 policy. 
 
 The California Idea Whatever else may be said in 
 criticism of the California policy of caring for depend 
 ent children it can not be charged with the inhumanity 
 of breaking up and scattering to the four winds of 
 
68 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 heaven the children of dependent parents who have 
 committed no offense other than that of poverty. In 
 most of the states of the east that I visited this is done 
 in the interests of economy, but not in the interests 
 of humanity. Eastern states in general say to the 
 widowed mother, in effect, "Very well, madam, if you 
 can not support your children we will take them from 
 you and parcel them out to persons who can support 
 them, but they will be no longer your children. They 
 will be adopted by others and will become their chil 
 dren as much as though they had been born to them." 
 
 California says to such an unfortunate woman, 
 "Madam, the state sympathizes with you in your dis 
 tress and is ready and willing to help you reasonably. 
 You may place your children in the orphanage of your 
 choice and leave them there, visiting them meantime 
 on proper occasions, until you can develop an earning 
 capacity which will enable you to get them under a 
 roof of your own providing. Or you may remain under 
 your own roof, if you have one, .and through your local 
 board of supervisors receive as much state aid for the 
 support of your half-orphan children as you need and 
 no more, provided that it does not exceed $75 per year, 
 and you may receive that aid as long as you need it, 
 but no longer. You may thus keep your family to 
 gether without grave hardship and your children shall 
 belong to you and not be given to a stranger." 
 
 The heart of California is right, and it is better that 
 it submit to some imposition than that, in the name of 
 fiscal economy, it steel its heart against the fundamental 
 promptings of parental affection. 
 
 Where Economies are Possible The writer ventures 
 the estimate, more from results of observation and in 
 quiry than from statistical or other information ob 
 tainable, that as many as one-fifth of the state-aided 
 children would be taken off the list under a system of 
 judicial determination of the fact of dependency such 
 as was suggested in the previous chapter. The juvenile 
 
THE FOUNDLING. > 
 
 court, aided by the efforts of a paid probation officer, 
 would be able so to enforce parental responsibility that 
 one-fifth of the children now hustled off to orphanages, 
 or put on the indigent list by supervisors, would be 
 supported in their own homes and sent to school. This 
 would save California somewhere between $75,000 and 
 $100,000 a year, and the children, the orphanages, and 
 the delinquent or careless parents themselves, would 
 be the better for the efficient practice of this economy. 
 Another economy of equal importance will be sug 
 gested in the chapter devoted to Placing Out. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 THE FOUNDLING. 
 
 It makes a world of difference whether or not one s 
 point of view of a social problem be at its vortex or 
 out on the circumference. To the matron in charge 
 of a lying-in hospital in a great city it looks as 
 though chastity were unknown and fidelity to the 
 marriage relation were an iridescent dream. Such 
 an one forgets that of every hundred persons who 
 enter the holy bonds of matrimony, for better or worse, 
 a vast majority hold themselves sacred to their mar 
 riage vows until separated by death. So, also, it is 
 about as hard for those upon the outer edge of the 
 problem of social purity to comprehend the stupendous 
 problem of illegitimacy as seen at the vortex. It is a 
 very real problem and one whose consideration society 
 should not shun. Illegitimacy, in America, may not 
 assume startling proportions when expressed in com 
 parative percentages, but, when compared with the 
 intelligent provision made for it it becomes a very 
 serious problem and seems likely to continue to be so! 
 The elemental promptings of sex emotion are likely 
 to go on producing their illegitimate results to the 
 end of time. 
 
70 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 A Few Fallacies Dispelled It is commonly supposed 
 that illegitimate children, mainly classed as "found 
 lings" when they come into public custody, are badly 
 born, likely to be diseased, and better off dead than 
 alive. This is exceptionally, but not at all generally, 
 true. Some there are who come into the world diseased 
 beyond redemption, and most of these do die, in spite 
 of all that can be done for them, within the first six 
 months of their lives, but by far the greater number of 
 foundlings are as healthy as other children. The women 
 of the redlight districts are mainly sterile and add few 
 to the ranks of illegitimacy. Nor are these babes the 
 product of the baser forms of criminality, which are 
 not so much given to seduction as to patronage of 
 brothels. 
 
 The stream of foundlings pours out of the homes of 
 the people, their mothers being, for the most part, 
 giddy, untrained girls still in their "teens," and their 
 fathers either youths of their own age or, more often, 
 employers, men w r ith families, men of mature physique 
 but with crippled consciences. Not a few are really 
 love children, born outside of wedlock, but inside of 
 a real and true affection which some barrier prevents 
 culminating in marriage. If given a good start these 
 little people, who are not at all to blame for their 
 unconventional advent, develop into surprisingly 
 beautiful and intelligent children. Is it necessary to 
 social preservation that they must ever walk in the 
 shadow of the sin of parents to them unknown ? 
 
 Mortality Among Foundlings The social problem of 
 t/he disposition of foundlings has, so far as it became 
 related to institutional life, been well nigh eliminated 
 by the atrocious percentages of mortality. Tewksbury 
 almshouse in Massachusetts lost 98 per cent of these 
 little people year afte^ year, and yet science and 
 nursing did about as well as it knew how to preserve 
 them alive. The best foundling hospitals in the east 
 have, until recent years, lost 85 to 90 per cent of their 
 
THE FOUNDLING. 71 
 
 charges. The asylums in San Francisco have lost 
 somewhere between 50 and 75 per cent, and are still 
 losing nearly as many. Those in charge do the best 
 they can under the circumstances, but the circumstances 
 have 110 business to be what they are and have been. 
 Circumstances have been guilty of nothing less than 
 manslaughter and they have been clearly remediable. 
 Babies simply can not be brought up on bottles, 
 iherded together in groups of ten or a dozen, and with no 
 more individual attention than consists in being given 
 the bottle at stated intervals and having their diapers 
 hanged. A baby suffered to lie on its back hour after 
 hour and day after day without being taken in arms, 
 talked to and moved about, will die or, if it survive, 
 will be as stupid as a knot on a log. The intelligence 
 of the human race is dependent upon the start which 
 a mother s tireless baby talk and chuckling afford. 
 
 The Law at Fault The California statute in such 
 cases made and provided allows $12.50 per month for 
 the maintenance of every foundling maintained "in" 
 an institution during the first eighteen months of its 
 life. But if it be maintained in an institution it is 
 likely to die. The present State Board of Examiners 
 has graciously construed that word "in" to mean "by" 
 until such time as the legislature can change it so as 
 to permit of these little people being boarded out, not 
 more than tw r o in a place, with motherly women who 
 have had experience in bringing up babies, to be 
 watched and cared for by the physician attending upon 
 the institution. -This is a good way of taking care of 
 foundlings until they have reached the age when they 
 can eat soft foods and are no longer dependent upon 
 bottles that, very likely, are supplied with drugged 
 milk that some assassin of a milk-dealer has provided. 
 Massachusetts now boards out all of its foundlings, 
 but the mortality is still great where the bottle must 
 be depended on. 
 
INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 Mothers Milk the True Elixir of Life It has been 
 found, however, that the only sure way to get the 
 foundling over the first six months of its life, the 
 rucial period, is to give it the breast. In the lying-in 
 hospitals this is attained partly by requiring mothers 
 about to be confined to agree to remain a year, if 
 possible, and those who are strong enough are required 
 to nurse another baby besides their own, giving each 
 one side of the breast and supplementing with one or 
 more milk feeds for both babies each day. This works 
 admirably so far as that source of supply can be made 
 to go, but it does not go far enough to cover all of 
 the basket babies left at the doors of these institutions. 
 
 Italian Women to the Rescue The heavy work that 
 used to be done by Irishmen in this country, such as 
 sewer construction and railroad building and street 
 work, is now being done mainly by Italians. These 
 Italian workmen are frequently if not always accom 
 panied to this country by their wives. Through a most 
 unfortunate superstition many of these Italian women 
 will not employ physicians during confinement, but 
 trust to the unskilled offices of ignorant old midwives 
 who deliver something like two-fifths of the infants of 
 these working-class women stillborn. The discovery 
 of this fact has, in New York city, resulted in the 
 developing of a remunerative and thoroughly humane 
 system of putting foundlings out to be nursed by these 
 unfortunate mothers. They receive $8 to $10 per month 
 and, no matter how lowly may be their own standard 
 of living, their babies thrive. These women live on a 
 vegetable diet, their milk is rich, and, even in a squalid 
 home, the baby is all right. Inasmuch as these workers 
 are scattered all over the country it will be worth 
 while for those having foundlings in their charge to 
 exhaust this source of life preservation before folding 
 the hands in the comforting assurance that, "The Lord 
 giveth and the Lord taketh away." 
 
REMEDIABLE DEFICIENCIES OF CHILDREN. 73 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 REMEDIABLE DEFICIENCIES OF CHILDREN. 
 
 The New York Foundling Hospital (Catholic) is 
 doing* a work in rectifying the remediable defects of 
 childhood that all the world should copy. It has the 
 handling of perhaps 1500 illegitimate and foundling 
 children each year, and instead of placing them out 
 as soon as possible, in whatever condition they may be, 
 all of the remediable defects of childhood are remedied 
 before the little people pass from under thejr custody. 
 It is a beautiful work, beautifully done, with the result 
 that they have many hundreds of beautiful children 
 to be placed in approved homes. 
 
 To do this a hospital is maintained which has at its 
 disposal some of the best surgical skill the great city 
 can supply. Bow legs and knock-knees are made 
 straight by breaking and resetting. Crossed eyes are 
 coaxed back into line with spectacles or, if too crooked, 
 are straightened by an operation. Irregular teeth are, 
 put in order, adenoid growths are removed from the 
 air passages, and all things possible are done to give 
 their little charges a fair chance in life s race for the 
 best places. I want everybody s children as well looked 
 out for as nobody s children. The thing is possible and 
 practical. 
 
 The Handicap of Infirmity There is no handicap to 
 carry through life like the consciousness of inferiority. 
 It discounts all the opportunities of life from the start. 
 More than this, it lays the foundation for a life of crim 
 inality. Professor Frank Lydston in his "Diseases of 
 Society" declares: "The nearer we get to the marrow 
 of criminality, the more closely it approximates pathol 
 ogy. The questions of physique, education and sur- 
 roundings of children are the warp and woof of the 
 fabric of the prevention of crime. The child criminal 
 is something of which civilization should be ashamed." 
 4 
 
74 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 Of 100 children received at the New York Juvenile 
 Asylum, 94 had defective teeth, 15 of these had teeth 
 that were in process of decay and one boy had already 
 lost four teeth. Now the condition of the teeth has an 
 influence upon the behavior, if not upon the actual 
 criminality, of the child. Defective teeth cause fer 
 mentation, inability to grind the food properly causes 
 indigestion, indigestion causes malnutrition, and mal 
 nutrition is the greatest known cause of criminality 
 among children because it leaves their brains as de 
 fective as their bodies. Of 1000 delinquent children 
 examined by this institution 65 per cent were found 
 to be suffering from malnutrition. A weakened brain 
 is attended with a weakened conscience and a weakened 
 understanding of the consequences of conduct. 
 
 The Remedy The children in the institutions of 
 California are inadequately safeguarded against those 
 remediable deficiencies which are so likely to fasten 
 upon childhood, but so are the children outside of insti 
 tutional life. Their welfare is of concern to the state 
 for the reason that the defective child of to-day is not 
 unlikely to become the criminal of a few years hence. 
 It would be profitable for some department of state 
 government, perhaps the State Board of Health, to 
 put into the field a number of skilled diagnosticians of 
 diseases common to childhood, to visit" all of the insti 
 tutions of the state where there are children, including 
 the public schools, for the purpose of making such 
 examinations as may be required and informing parents 
 and teachers of such defects as may exist, with direc 
 tions as to how they may be remedied. The ordinary 
 practitioner does not always detect defects that an 
 expert will perceive at a glance, but however that may 
 be, parents are wonderfully blind to the existence of 
 such deficiencies. So much of this work as is educa 
 tional the state can well afford to do, that it may de 
 crease crime and pauperism likely otherwise to result 
 later in life from disorders which will have come to be 
 
SOME THINGS ABOUT ORPHANAGES. 75 
 
 irremediable handicaps to a proper physical and mental 
 development. 
 
 A State Hospital At least Iowa, Michigan and 
 Massachusetts maintain state hospitals for remedying 
 the deficiencies of such children as have become wards 
 of the state, and every child whose parents are pecun 
 iarily unable to send a defective child to a hospital 
 should become a ward of the state to that extent. It 
 would not be very costly or at all out of place to have 
 such a hospital connected with the medical department 
 of the State University. It would not need to be a 
 large one or expensive to maintain, and it might easily 
 be able to pay for itself over and over again every 
 year by giving the defective childhood of the state a 
 chance to develop into a well-nourished and symmetric 
 ally formed manhood and womanhood. 
 
 I am quite sure that I have seen more mouth-breath 
 ers and more cross-eyed children in some single orphan 
 ages in California than I have seen in all the orphanages 
 visited throughout the east, put them all together. 
 The state will do well to look more closely to its own. 
 Crime and pauperism are heavy burdens, and are more 
 easily lightened at the start than at the finish. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 SOME THINGS ABOUT ORPHANAGES. 
 
 California has no state orphanage and there is only 
 one county orphanage in the state, and that is at 
 Fresno. The other forty-three orphanages are benevo 
 lent institutions created and controlled either by some 
 church or some charitable organization. Fifteen of the 
 orphanages, and quite the largest ones, are owned and 
 controlled by the Catholic Church, the remainder of the 
 forty-three are either Protestant or belong to benevo 
 lent orders, such as the Odd Fellows or the Good 
 Templars. The state has not found it necessary to 
 
/U INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 construct and maintain any orphanages on public 
 account, and certain it is that it could not undertake 
 the work nearly so cheaply as it is done now and it is 
 open to doubt if it would be as well done, as under 
 .existing conditions. 
 
 The Proper Function of an Orphanage There are 
 those who decry orphanages as if they were a super 
 fluity for which society has, or should have, no use. 
 Such is not the fact. No matter how far the systems 
 of placing out and boarding out may be carried, as in 
 Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, there will still be a 
 large percentage of dependent children who must be 
 cared for in an orphanage or go uncared for altogether. 
 There are scores of such institutions in Massachusetts 
 and Pennsylvania, although not under state control 
 or receiving state aid. They perform their useful serv 
 ice none the less. 
 
 The Highest Use The highest use an orphanage can 
 perform is to take care of the children of the worthy 
 poor until they can tide over a period of adversity and 
 get once more upon a self-sustaining basis. This is the 
 principal service that the orphanages of California are 
 performing. x I have not reliable statistics from Cali 
 fornia orphanages covering this feature of their work, 
 but of the 40,000 children which the Juvenile Asylum of 
 New York has cared for during the last fifty years 
 33,000 went back to their own families. I think that 
 this percentage will hold good in nearly if not quite all 
 cases. The average stay of a half orphan in a Califor 
 nia orphanage, as nearly as I can approximate it, is 
 between two and three years, when the widowed mother 
 or the surviving father marries again, and the child 
 is again taken under a parental roof. This is a work 
 of the highest benevolence and, for the most part, is 
 performed in good faith and with credit to the insti 
 tutions rendering that service. 
 
SOMK THIM;S ABOI:T ORPHANAGES. 77 
 
 / Taking Care of the Unattractive The second highest 
 function performed by orphanages is the taking care 
 of unattractive children, who have no one to take care 
 of them, until they can be made capable of taking care 
 of themselves.i State aid ceases at 14, the most vulner 
 able age of a child s life, but many of the orphanages 
 hold on to their charges of this class long after that 
 and until they can be placed in good homes at wages. 
 It is not improbable that there may be 1000 unattractive 
 children being cared for in California orphanages at 
 the present time. 
 
 To be Straightened Up A third valuable use an 
 orphanage can perform for the public is to receive 
 children from the streets, untrained and in poor physi 
 cal condition, and rough-break them, as they say of 
 young colts only partially trained to harness, remedy 
 their physical defects and so make them fit to be placed 
 in homes to be reared as own children. This service 
 is being performed to some advantage already, but 
 might be to much greater if some of the suggestions 
 made in the preceding chapter, whereby the state might 
 aid in the work, were put into effective operation. 
 They need help 011 the medical and surgical side of the 
 question. 
 
 Institutionalism But the best orphanage that ever 
 was is not as good a place for the rearing of a child as 
 an ordinarily good American home. The best the 
 orphanage people can do, whether their institution 
 be conducted under the congregate or the cottage plan, 
 the child brought up in an institution will inevitably 
 lose much that goes toward the making of an inde 
 pendent and self-reliant personality. The child will 
 be an incubator chicken instead of a chicken that the 
 old hen has raised. Any one who has managed an 
 incubator will know what this illustration signifies. 
 An incubator chicken hasn t a "lick" of worldly wis 
 dom, and neither has the institutional child. 
 

 78 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 A Little of it Good A little of institutionalism is not 
 a bad thing, especially for a child that has been a bit 
 of a delinquent, as most dependent children have been. 
 Having, up to that time, been excessively individual 
 istic, a few months, or a year or so, of communistic 
 life is not at all bad for them. Besides, if the march 
 ing and the uniform were subtracted from the "insti 
 tutionalism" those who find institutionalism such a 
 bugaboo would b** nm^.Ti fit PJLSP The marching^Js the 
 most orderly, and quite the best, method of going and 
 coming, and the uniform is the cheapest way of dress 
 ing, andjias^ the further merit ot bemg~EFe onost equal 
 and therefore affording the least ground for suspected 
 discriminations and consequent heart-busings. The 
 real objections t.n i n^t^ll tinnfl.1 ism ]\? fjppppr than 
 marchings and uniforms. They^ lie in the assimilation 
 of the individual to the mass. 
 
 Benevolent and Malevolent Assimilation There are 
 these two kinds of assimilation. The bad urchin 
 brought into a well-regulated institution of reasonably 
 good children does not, as popularly supposed, imme 
 diately proceed to corrupt the mass. He is assimilated 
 to it and not it to him, and he is benefited; but the 
 child that has something better in him than the common 
 herd can boast is also assimilated, and malevolently. 
 He loses the greater part of his identity and power of 
 independent self-direction and is not likely ever to 
 regain it if brought to maturity in such an institution. 
 
 The Cottage Plan The cottage system of maintain 
 ing orphanages lessens the evils of institutionalism, 
 but can not wholly overcome them. The masses are 
 smaller and the assimilations less complete. The masses 
 are also graded into classes, and the assimilations are, 
 accordingly, to the class rather than to the mass; but 
 the best that can be done does not more than approxi 
 mate, under the cottage system, the condition of the 
 home where children see more of adult life, and are 
 
SOMK ORPHANAGES I HAVE SEEN. 79 
 
 influenced powerfully by it, and where they are in 
 evitably thrown more upon their own resources. 
 
 The Cottage Plan More Costly The cottage plan of 
 maintaining an orphanage is more costly than the con 
 gregate system, because of the increased cost of superin 
 tendence. The New York Juvenile Asylum, described 
 in a chapter devoted to it, may be taken as the best 
 model of a cottage system this country has to offer. 
 There the per capita cost per year is $220. The con 
 gregate orphanages of California, with few exceptions, 
 get on for half that money. It is a question of what 
 can be afforded. The cottage system is best, but it 
 costs most, and yet the more costly system is the 
 cheaper in the end if the money can be provided. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 SOME ORPHANAGES I HAVE SEEN. 
 
 I did not go out of my way in search of orphanages 
 while making my eastern pilgrimage for the study of 
 institutional life, but I think that I saw some of the 
 better types, and some that perhaps had as much to 
 teach California as any others that I might have found. 
 Besides, time was all the w r hile pressing hard. 
 
 The Iowa Soldiers and Sailors Orphans Home This 
 institution grew out of the need which the Civil Wai- 
 created for taking care of the children of the soldiers 
 and sailors who had given their lives to their country. 
 It is located just outside of Davenport, on 320 acres 
 of good land so well cultivated that it yields $9,000 to 
 $10,000 a year toward the support of the institution. 
 There are tw r enty cottages with thirty children each, 
 besides other buildings. The boys and girls are domi 
 ciled in separate cottages, and the younger children 
 are kept by themselves. The others are scattered 
 through the different cottages more by temperament 
 
80 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 than by age, so that there are five or six older children 
 in each cottage to help the matron do the work, al 
 though the little ones are made to work, too. 
 
 The physical defects of these children are admirably 
 looked after. The older boys work on the farm half 
 a day and are half a day in school, and the older girls 
 grow vegetable and flower gardens. The average stay 
 of children in the home is five and one half years and, 
 as their education, through the grammar grade, is com 
 pleted a state agent finds homes for them, or they go 
 back to their own homes if they have relatives fit and 
 able to take them. The superintendent, Mr. F. J. 
 Sessions, fights institutionalization at every possible 
 point and has certainly reduced it to a minimum. 
 
 Dependency is, in Iow r a, either judicially determined 
 or determined by the supervisors of the county that 
 sends the children and has to pay $6 per month toward 
 their maintenance. The state pays $12 per month for 
 each child not partially supported by a county, and 
 $6 for those who are, and this, with the profits off the 
 farm, about meets expenses ; a very good showing 
 certainly. This is all that Iowa, as a state, does for 
 orphans. 
 
 The Michigan State School At Coldwater, Michigan, 
 is a most interesting institution known as a state school. 
 It is sort of a clearing house for dependent children, 
 and it is a good one. It takes in hand such children 
 as do not fall into the hands of private or associate 
 philanthropy; they are adjudged dependent by the 
 probate court of the county in which found, whereupon 
 the state assumes all responsibility for the child and 
 the parent loses all rights to the child, no matter what 
 the cause of dependency. The penalty of poverty is 
 the loss of the child, and some other person gets it to 
 rear as soon as it has been made fit to go into a home. 
 Physical defects are admirably remedied if medical 
 and surgical skill can accomplish the result. 
 
 To find homes for these children there is a state agent 
 
SOMK ORPHANAGES I HAVE SEEN. 81 
 
 in each county, and that agent also visits each child 
 in the county two or more times a year. There is also 
 a state agent, connected with the school, who visits, at 
 least once a year, each child placed. This institution 
 has a record of 5480 children placed in homes, 1475 of 
 whom are still wards of the state and closely looked 
 after. The stay of the child in this institution is short, 
 not long enough to become at all institutionalized. 
 Of 417 children who had come in during the year, only 
 175 remained in the school when I was there, and 
 applications for children were hundreds ahead of the 
 power to supply them. 
 
 Little Lone "Buckeyes" Ohio as a state does noth 
 ing for the support of its little lone "buckeyes" who 
 chance to be dependent. It does what many persons 
 in California have advocated doing, turns them back 
 to the several counties to take care of their own de 
 pendent children. It is complained in California that 
 the multiplicity of orphanages tends to increase de 
 pendency, but the county system tends to the same 
 end in a greater degree, for there are more of them 
 and each one furnishes political jobs for those in con 
 trol of dependent children. 
 
 I am told that, once a county orphanage is estab 
 lished, the officials in charge manage to skurry around 
 and find dependent children enough to enable them to 
 hold their own official positions. I visited one of these 
 county orphanages just out of Toledo. It was fairly 
 good, but not better than almost any one California 
 helps to sustain. The cost to the taxpayer is $10 per 
 month per child, or quite a little more than in Cali 
 fornia. Ohio also has many charitably endowed orphan 
 ages rich enough to be self-sustaining and, also, a very 
 good system of child placing, but so far as dependent 
 children are supported at public charge the work is 
 done neither cheaper nor better than in California. 
 
 The Protestant Orphanage at Cleveland I visited 
 this fine old institution because it has such a celebrated 
 
82 INSTITUTIONAL 1JFE. 
 
 and honorable history. It neither asks for nor receives 
 any public support, except that the property actually 
 used for the care of the children is not taxed. Its 
 income-producing property is taxed, but the income is 
 sufficient. Only about 100 children on an average are 
 maintained here, both boys and girls. The work is to 
 gather in the needy, fit them up, train them to decent 
 living and then place them out. Such infants as come 
 in are boarded out in the -country mainly, in approved 
 homes, at $2 to $3 per week. Very few of them die, 
 for they are out of town where good milk is abundant 
 and there are only three or four in a place. 
 
 The superintendent, Mr. Shunk, had devoted thirty- 
 three years of continuous service in the institution, and 
 his wife one year more. It is not expected that, any 
 child will remain in the institution longer than three 
 years. If in that time a parent can take care of a child 
 it is given back, otherwise it is placed in a home. No 
 children not sound in body or mind are accepted at 
 all, so little is done in the way of remedying physical 
 defects. That is left to other institutions. 
 
 This institution has complete records of over 2000 
 children placed, but they are sealed to the public and 
 to parents as well. When a parent has given up a 
 child it is gone, and the children do not know and can 
 not learn where other members of their family have 
 gone. Their conditions of life are so different that 
 they would come to have little in common and then the 
 foster parents who have reared them have the first 
 right to them and to be protected from their relatives. 
 Less than 15 per cent of the children placed have had 
 to be replaced, so well is the preparatory work done 
 before a child is taken to a new home. It is a clean, 
 hard, cold system, but its fruit is good citizenship 
 where there would have been bad citizenship and prob 
 ably criminality but for the merciful work done. 
 
 I visited other orphanages than those discussed 
 above, but inasmuch as none of them possessed dis 
 tinctive features of radical importance I close this 
 
IIOMK FINDING FOR CHILDREN. SH 
 
 chapter with a reference back to the chapters devoted 
 to those semi-orphanage and reformatories, the New 
 York Juvenile Asylum and the Catholic Protectory, as 
 having important bearings upon the subject of this 
 chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 HOME FINDING FOR CHILDREN. 
 
 If any one feature of institutional life can be said 
 to have been uppermost in my mind while investigating 
 the institutional life of the eastern states it was that 
 of the placing out in suitable homes of children free 
 and fit to be placed in homes. There is little reason 
 to doubt that there is a childless home for every home 
 less child in this land, and no reason to doubt that a 
 fair sort of home is a better place for a child than the 
 best orphanage that ever was. 
 
 California has, in my judgment, a round thousand 
 children in her forty-four orphanages, costing the state 
 from $75,000 to $100,000 a year, aside from what they 
 cost the charitably disposed, who are both free and fit 
 to be placed in homes, but who are not being so placed, 
 and for the want of adequate machinery for doing 
 the placing. I think that the supplying of this need 
 is the most important and pressing reformatory meas 
 ure connected with the dependent-child problem as 
 it affects California. This is my excuse for devoting 
 so much space to this chapter. 
 
 Child and State Let it be understood at the outset 
 that the placing out of dependent childhood is clearly 
 a state responsibility. Every dependent child is a 
 ward of the state and the state is not doing its duty 
 by childhood if it shirks its guardianship without 
 limitation, upon whomever the impulse of charity or 
 the impulse of personal acquisitiveness may prompt 
 to undertake the work of home finding for children. 
 
84 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 The state, through its properly qualified officers (pref 
 erably the State Board of Charities and Corrections) 
 should know what is doing in this direction and who 
 is doing it, and should have power to regulate the work 
 where regulation is needed. This is the almost uni 
 versal custom throughout the East and it is attended 
 with results of the highest beneficence. 
 
 The Michigan System Every county in Michigan 
 has a state agent whose business it is to find homes for 
 children dependent upon the state and to visit such 
 children as are placed in homes other than their own. 
 These agents are all men (which is probably a mistake), 
 who are appointed by the governor of the state and 
 who draw salaries ranging between $150 and $200 a 
 year, according to the populations of their respective 
 counties. It is more nearly correct to say that they 
 are paid a per diem for visiting, but the entire recom 
 pense can not during each calendar year exceed the 
 sums above mentioned. The appointments are petty 
 political ones, but the system does not work badly. 
 The trend of legislation in Michigan is to bring all 
 private and associate institutions for the care of de 
 pendent children into line with the state system of 
 placing out. The State Board of Charities and Cor 
 rections has a supervisorial control over all such in 
 stitutions and the greatest harmony exists between 
 private and public instrumentalities for doing this 
 much-needed work. 
 
 The New York Way In New York state every child 
 placed in any home other than its own by indenture, 
 adoption or to board, is reported to the State Board 
 of Charities and Corrections within five days under 
 severe penalty for failure, and the State Board of 
 Charities maintains a very perfect system of visitation 
 to guard the welfare of the child in the home thus pre 
 pared for it. About 4000 children are so placed annu 
 ally in the state of New York, and, besides, many New , 
 York children are placed in other states of the west 
 
HOME FINDING K< >K ( ! 1 1 1.DKKN. 80 
 
 and south. Some institutions are strong enough to 
 have their own system of placing out; others avail 
 themselves of systems already in existence. 
 
 The New York Juvenile Asylum System As stated 
 elsewhere in this volume the placing out in the west 
 is done for this institution by the Children s Home 
 Society, with headquarters at Chicago. About 125 
 children are sent west annually, children that are either 
 free to go because they have no one to look out for 
 them or who have been made free because their parents 
 are unfit to have their custody. This society pays the 
 Home Society $11 per year for placing and visiting 
 children, and $& more per year per child for office 
 work and correspondence. There are now 460 children 
 out who have been placed in this way and who are still 
 under the jurisdiction of the society, not having at 
 tained their majority. Sixty-seven of these were 
 replaced last year. Of one group of 92 children placed 
 in "first" homes, which means the first trial home, 33 
 had to be replaced once and 7 had to be replaced 
 twice before they found places where they fitted. The 
 Home Society at Chicago finds in its territory that 
 about half the children will have to be replaced at 
 least once before they fit well. 
 
 The Catholic Home Bureau This institution in New 
 York, an auxiliary of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, 
 ha.s about as perfect a system of home finding for 
 children as any organization in the country. It is 
 not as large as some others, as yet, but it is growing 
 and is doing an admirable work in an admirable man 
 ner. The Catholic Home Bureau has an office in New 
 York with a superintendent and several stenographers, 
 and it has seven agents in the field. 
 
 When about to enter a new diocese the consent and co 
 operation of the bishop of the diocese are first obtained, 
 and through the hearty cooperation of the bishop the 
 cooperation of the priests in the local parishes is like 
 wise obtained. A little pushing is sometimes needful 
 
86 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 in this quarter because the pastors of parish churches 
 are sometimes a good deal crowded with work and are 
 loath to take on new responsibilities, but it is rarely 
 the case that the hearty cooperation of the priest is 
 not secured in a little while at farthest. 
 
 The priest announces the probable coming 1 of an 
 agent of the society to his congregation and so prepares 
 the public mind for it. Then the priest makes out and 
 has ready for the agent upon his arrival a list of the 
 families in his parish who could, and perhaps should, 
 take a child to rear as an own child. No child is placed 
 without the approval of the parish priest who knows 
 his people thoroughly. This approval, while indis 
 pensable, is not all-sufficient. The home must also be 
 approved by the agent and, upon a full hearing, by 
 a special or general committee of the Home Bureau 
 itself. In fact, every possible precaution is taken to 
 first prepare the home for the child and the child for 
 the home to the end that they may fit. The home must 
 be permanent and reasonably prosperous, must be 
 moral and so situated that the child may receive re 
 ligious instruction. When at last the issue has been 
 decided the particular child goes to the designated 
 home and no other, and that home takes that child or 
 none. By making this decision a finality whimsical 
 preferences are avoided and the children stay put. 
 Less than one half of one per cent of the children placed 
 out by the Catholic Home Bureau during seven years 
 of experience have had to be replaced, and yet the 
 bureau is placing children at the rate of 300 per year. 
 This is an incomparable record, and for the reason 
 that the preliminary work is so intelligently and thor 
 oughly done, and for the further and more vital reason 
 that the child is taken into the home more because of 
 what the home can do for the child than of what the 
 child can do for the home. 
 
 Of Placing and Replacing in General The bane of 
 placing out children to be reared as own children is 
 the replacing. A long-whiskered Nebraskan engaged 
 
IIOMK FINDING FOR ( 1 1 I LDRKN. 87 
 
 in home finding confessed to me that 75 per cent of 
 the children he placed had to be replaced from once 
 to three times. Dr. Hastings H. Hart, of the Children s 
 Home Society at Chicago, admitted that 50 per cent 
 of the children placed by his society had to be replaced 
 before attaining their majority, and this is not con 
 sidered to be at all a bad record. In many instances 
 children are knocked about from pillar to post until 
 they become incorrigible and have to be sent to a 
 reform school, and for no other reason than that the 
 preliminary work of preparing a home for the child, 
 and a child for the home, was not tactfully and effi 
 ciently done. 
 
 The Protestant asylum at Cleveland, with thirty 
 years of experience in placing children out to be reared 
 as own children, and with 2000 children out, reports 
 that not above 15 per cent of the children have had to 
 be replaced. Under the Michigan system, so far as 
 it affects the State School at Coldwater, not above 5 
 per cent of the children placed in "first" homes have 
 to be placed a second time. If more than 25 per cent 
 of dependent children placed in "first" homes have 
 to be replaced it is, in my judgment, because the pre 
 liminary work was not tactfully and efficiently per 
 formed. In the cases of delinquent children of all 
 ages taken out of the slums of cities, 50 per cent of 
 replacings may not be out of reason. 
 
 Broken-down clergymen, who were failures in the 
 pulpit, may make the majority of child-placing agents, 
 but they do not make the best. They do not know 
 people, and therefore work to poor advantage. This 
 work is exacting and painstaking and requires clear 
 heads, quick wits, keen powers of observation and 
 discrimination and a genuine enthusiasm, and self- 
 dependent, middle-aged single women do about the 
 best work in this line that is done. 
 
 Why Children Are Applied For Commonly, orphan 
 ages are applied to for children big enough to work, 
 with the expectation that the child will do more for 
 
88 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 the family than the family will do for the child. In 
 such cases children are too often made into little 
 drudges scarcely better than young slaves. Again, a 
 child is applied for because the woman of the home 
 wants company, and a child to take out with her to 
 show off to good advantage. In such cases it is in 
 dispensable that the child have a peach-blow com 
 plexion and a sweet disposition. All want a sweet 
 disposition and no blemishes of person or character. 
 While a quid pro quo is not incompatible with the 
 taking of a child into the family home to be reared, yet, 
 if no higher motive than that is made manifest, no 
 child should be entrusted to such a household if a 
 better may be found. It is because of bitter experiences 
 of mistreatment and childish unhappiness that most 
 orphanages are reluctant to give their children to 
 whomever may ask for them. 
 
 Why Children Should be Applied For What parent 
 does not expect to do more for an own child than he 
 expects such child to do for him? And what foster 
 parent has a reasonable right to expect more from a 
 stranger than from an own child? The rearing of any 
 child is an act of unselfish consecration to the highest 
 form of human service, whether own or adopted. Un 
 less the childless home wants a child for the purpose 
 of doing for it, for the purpose of loving and cherishing 
 it, and of making the most out of it that the material 
 in it will allow, that home will do well to remain 
 childless, and the child will do well to remain in an 
 orphanage until it gets big enough to take its own 
 chances in a chill-hearted world. Thank heaven there 
 are those who apply for children because they love 
 children, because their hearts warm toward them, and 
 because they find their own highest happiness in min 
 istering to the needs of one of God s forlorn creatures. 
 Such persons often undertake the task as a thank 
 offering to a kind Providence for the abundant measure 
 of their own prosperity. I have in mind a woman who 
 
HOME FINDING FOR CHILDREN. 89 
 
 brought up twelve children of her own, and three 
 others, but, when they had all gone from the motherly 
 coop, she sent a daughter to an orphanage for another, 
 asking by preference for "some little crippled child 
 whom no one else would care to take." I venture the 
 prophecy that, in the kingdom-come, that swarthy and 
 rotund multi-mother will have a stature ten feet tall 
 with a complexion of alabaster. There are such men 
 and women in the world. The thing of it is to find 
 them and put them in mind of an opportunity to render 
 a Christ service to one of those little ones whom he 
 always suffered to come unto him. The rearing of a 
 child is no picnic. It is a sacramental covenant with 
 the Most High. 
 
 The Children s Guardians of New Jersey This or 
 ganization has not borne the test of time, for it was 
 only organized in 1899, but it seems to be working on 
 right lines. The working force is supported by the 
 state, but the children are supported by the counties 
 in which they reside. When dependent children are 
 turned into the almshouses they are at once turned 
 over to the Children s Guardians, which first boards 
 them out in private families at rates ranging between 
 $1.50 and $2.75 per week, according to age and care 
 needed, with an allowance of $18 per year for clothes, 
 and then finds permanent homes for them as soon as 
 they are free and fit to go into homes. This is done so 
 efficiently that there is no accumulation of dependent 
 childhood in New Jersey. 
 
 Many families may suffer dismemberment of a per 
 manent character, but the larger part of the children 
 taken in charge are discharged to relatives who have 
 survived their adversity or who have been found after- 
 diligent search. Often they are willing enough to take 
 care of the children, but had lost track of their kin and 
 did not know of their poverty. 
 
 Children s Aid Societies There air many of these 
 and some of them have done a great work in finding 
 homes for homeless children. The New York society 
 
90 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 of this name is fifty-one years old and has placed 
 children in the west and south by the tens of thousands. 
 About five per cent of these children have turned out 
 badly. Twenty-five per cent have had to be replaced 
 and fifteen per cent more than once. A farm is main 
 tained in Westchester county, where the children 
 gathered up from the streets* and tenements of New 
 York are sent to be put into good condition before 
 going west or south, of late years mainly to Texas. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 WHAT CALIFORNIA SHOULD DO. 
 
 California is maintaining as dependent, by and with 
 the help of public charity, a large number of children 
 who should not be dependent and who need not be if 
 those who are responsible for them were made to do 
 their duty. It must be somebody s business to do this 
 or it will not be done. It blights the life of the child 
 and encourages a hereditary pauperism. 
 
 The office of the State Board of Examiners maintains 
 a restraining influence over dependency, but it has 
 not now and never has had a force adequate for search 
 ing out the ultimate facts concerning each case certi 
 fied up to it by the forty-four orphanages and the 
 fifty-seven boards of supervisors of the respective 
 counties. Nor are the managers of the orphanages any 
 better equipped for this service. They are charity 
 workers, their means is limited and the time they can 
 give to the work more so, and, besides, a hard-luck 
 story is likely to be received at more than par value 
 by persons charged with the conduct of benevolent 
 institutions. If they had not been benevolently inclined 
 they_would not have been associated with a benevolent 
 institution. 
 
 A proper tribunal for the determination of an issue 
 of fact in which the public or the state is interested, 
 is a ceurt. I think that the law should be so amended 
 
WHAT CALIFORNIA SHOULD DO. 91 
 
 that no child should become a charge upon the bounty 
 of the state until its dependency has been judicially 
 determined. This will save the state tens of thousands 
 of dollars annually and will work childhood no wrong. 
 It will also have a tendency to enforce parental re 
 sponsibility. I have already spoken quite fully on this 
 subject in the chapter devoted to "The Dependent 
 Child." 
 
 My next most important recommendation is for the. 
 establishment of a system of authorized home-finding 
 for children who are both free and fit to go into homes 
 to be reared as own children or by indenture until 
 they are old enough to take care of themselves. There 
 is a species of child brokerage going 011 that should be 
 stopped, but all proper persons should be licensed to 
 engage in home-finding who desire to devote them 
 selves to that benevolence. 
 
 It is my judgment that this much-needed work can 
 best be performed under the supervision and control 
 of the State Board of Charities and Corrections. It 
 should have power to scrutinize all agencies for child- 
 placing and to authorize or prohibit their activities 
 according as their work meets with approval or merits 
 disapprobation. Coupled with this should go a visi- 
 torial power, with force enough to make that power 
 effective, which should result in an agent visiting every 
 child placed out by any person in the state as often 
 as twice a year until legally adopted or until such 
 children have attained their majority. 
 
 One reason why this function should be turned over 
 to the State Board of Charities and Corrections is that 
 such is the custom of the .older states of the Union, 
 which have been brought into closest contact with the 
 dependent-child problem, and the system works Avell 
 there. 
 
 A second reason is that a system, once established, 
 can be given a continuity of operation under such a 
 board that it could not have under any state office 
 likdy to suffer a change of personnel at every change of 
 
92 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 administration. A continuing policy is indispensable 
 to success. 
 
 Furthermore, the supervision of the placing of chil 
 dren in homes is itself a charity and appertains natu 
 rally to a State Board of Charities. 
 
 Finally, under no circumstances should a dependent 
 child become the victim of partisan politics. In all of 
 the states of the east, so far as I have been able to 
 inform myself, their several State Boards of Charities 
 have maintained themselves entirely outside of the 
 current of political influence, and the constitution of the 
 California State Board is well calculated to attain this 
 much to be desired end. In no other board or com 
 mission is the welfare of the child likely to be so well 
 and so impartially looked out for as under the State 
 Board of Charities and Corrections. 
 
 The auditing of expense accounts should continue to 
 be, as at present, a function of the State Board of Ex 
 aminers. 
 
 These two reformatory measures will, I feel sure, if 
 put into effective operation, cut the state s financial 
 burden occasioned by dependent childhood in twain, 
 and yet make the dependent child much better cared for 
 than at present. 
 
 The dependent child is the ward of the state and the 
 state should better and more intelligently discharge 
 its duties as ultimate guardian. There has been dere 
 liction of duty in this particular, and the consequences 
 of that dereliction have been serious to the child and 
 burdensome to the state treasury. 
 
 Furthermore, by extending the paid probation officer 
 system to all of the counties of the state, as stated in 
 the chapter devoted to "The Dependent Child," a well- 
 ordered and most promising system of child placing, 
 and child visiting, under the eyes of the juvenile court, 
 will have been at once created. With the aid of the 
 State Board of Charities and Corrections in organizing 
 this system cooperatively California will be equipped 
 with a placing-out and visitation system second to that 
 of no other state in the Union. 
 
TMK BOAKI>IX(i-OrT SYSTEM. 93 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE BOARDING-OUT SYSTEM. 
 
 All states and countries have orphanages, but there 
 are some states which are coming to the conclusion 
 that an orphanage is not absolutely indispensable and 
 perhaps does not furnish the best disposition that can 
 be made of a dependent child. To send a dependent 
 child off to the nearest orphanage is to move in the 
 direction of least resistance, but not always in the 
 direction of best opportunity for the child. 
 
 The Massachusetts Way There are a good many 
 orphanages in Massachusetts, but they are nearly all 
 of them rich enough to live and do their appointed 
 work without other support than their endowments 
 afford, although charity may be appealed to now and 
 again by some of them. However, there are many 
 children who become dependent who fall into the hands 
 of the State Board of Charities instead of into an 
 orphanage. This board boards these children out in 
 licensed private families all over the state instead of 
 putting them into an institution of any sort. And this 
 is done whether the dependent child has relatives or 
 not. 
 
 Massachusetts has upward of 4000 of its wards out 
 at board at prices ranging from $2 per week for ordi 
 nary children to $2.75 for babies, and not more than 
 three or four are allowed in one family. Most of these 
 homes are on New England farms, where the children 
 are well housed and sent to school if old enough. The 
 state also clothes the children in addition to boarding 
 them and pays for reasonable medical attendance. If 
 children are in a diseased condition they are first sent 
 to the Massachusetts general hospital for treatment. 
 
 The first cost of caring for dependent children in 
 this way is quite a good deal in excess of that in the 
 California orphanage, but the Yankee trick of it is 
 
94 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 that when the State Board undertakes to change the 
 boarding-place of children about an even half of them 
 are refused to be given up. They have worked them 
 selves into the hearts of their care-takers until they 
 are willing to keep them without cost to the state, and 
 they are reared as own children. 
 
 To insure good treatment of the children boarded out 
 and placed .out, a corps of fifty volunteer visitors is 
 maintained in the different communities where the 
 children are placed. They keep close watch and report 
 to the State Board of Charities at short intervals if 
 there be necessity for it. In addition to these the 
 State Board maintains a small corps of trained visitors 
 who are in the field nearly all the time and who see 
 all the state s dependent wards at least twice a year 
 or as much oftener as may be necessary to insure good 
 care. 
 
 Independent Boston The city of Boston has a similar 
 system of its own, managed independently of the geiv- 
 eral state work. The first fight Boston makes is to 
 prevent a child having a record of pauperism to shadow 
 it in after life, and to this end a thorough investigation 
 of each case is made and if possible some relative is 
 found to whom the dependent child may be safely sent. 
 The law makes grandparents responsible if they have 
 the ability to pay, and they may either take the de 
 pendent child into their own home or pay for his 
 board elsewhere, in which case no record of pauperism 
 is made. If no relative can be found to assume the 
 burden the fact of dependency then becomes estab 
 lished more by investigation than by judicial procedure, 
 but there are officers in abundance commissioned to 
 do this work under the guidance of a board of seven 
 trustees of the poor. Families are held together as 
 long as possible, even if they must be helped to tide 
 over trying periods. Children are taken from their 
 parents only when unfit, that fact being judicially de 
 termined. Boston has over -900 dependent and neg- 
 
THE BOAKDING-OI T SYSTEM. 95 
 
 lected children boarding out in the New England states 
 at city expense. These children are all visited by paid 
 visitors independently of the state visitors. About the 
 only institutions connected with the whole Boston sys 
 tem are a parental school and a house of reformation. 
 
 Something Doing in Pennsylvania The Children s 
 Aid Society at Philadelphia has entered upon an im 
 portant work much in line with the Boston and Massa 
 chusetts systems. This association receives a lump 
 sum of $7500 from the state, and $2 per child per week 
 from the city of Philadelphia for dependent children 
 boarded out. If parents encounter an industrial hard 
 ship of some sort, which they frequently do as a result 
 of strikes and lockouts, they may turn their children 
 over to this society and it -will take them into the 
 country, board them out and send them to school, and 
 bring them back again when the parents become able 
 to support them. 
 
 If, however, children are really dependent they are 
 first boarded at rates ranging from $1.50 per week, 
 where a child is old enough to do some work, to $2.75 
 for a baby in arms. The babies are always sent where 
 cows are kept, and they generally thrive. The Aid 
 Society allows $30 per year for clothing and something 
 for medical attendance if necessary, although local 
 physicians seldom charge for their services. 
 
 As in Massachusetts, so in Pennsylvania, when the 
 society undertakes to change boarding-places there is 
 generally a weepy time of it, with the result that the 
 child remains in the home as a free if not as an adopted 
 child. Of 7000 children out at the time of my visit 
 fully 3000 were on the free list. A close system of 
 visitation is maintained, and the consensus of opinion 
 seemed to be that the boarding-out system is far prefer 
 able to the orphanage plan of caring for dependent 
 children and not much more expensive in the long run. 
 The children enjoy a normal home life and are not at 
 all institutionized and only slightly pauperized. 
 
96 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 In all cases above mentioned only well children are, 
 in the main, boarded out children with no deficiencies 
 to speak of. The epileptics are sent to an institution 
 especially for their care, the feeble-minded to another, 
 and those with remediable deficiencies are sent to the 
 hospitals where they are generally treated free, or next 
 thing to it, and so are given a fair start in life. 
 
 The boarding-out system is not a bad one if looked 
 after sharply, but if not children are not unlikely to 
 suffer hardships through falling into the hands of the 
 wrong kind of persons. Vigilance is the price of suc 
 cess, but it seemed to me that there was no lack of 
 requisite vigilance. Always, too, this system supple 
 ments a very old, ample and well-endowed system of 
 orphanages founded by individual or associated be 
 nevolence, and the boarding-out system practically 
 takes care of only the excess of children over and above 
 what the institutions are able to care for. It is not 
 causing any of such institutions, of which Massachu 
 setts has a round hundred, to close their doors. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 ODDS AND ENDS OF THE CHILD PROBLEM. 
 
 Adoption There are those who feel that they are 
 not warranted in placing out a child in a home unless 
 they can require the foster parents to adopt the child 
 legally and so make it their own. This is as likely to 
 work to the disadvantage of the child as to its advan 
 tage. What the dependent child needs is to be well 
 brought up, and the child that finds itself in a home 
 where it by and by ceases to be welcome is not bene 
 fited by being so annexed to that home that it can not 
 legally be separated from it. It will be far better to 
 have it -replaced in a home more suited to its tempera 
 ment and character. There are many who would be 
 willing to take a child to rear to maturity and to fit for 
 
ODDS AND ENDS OF THK CMIU) PROBLEM. 97 
 
 life who are not willing to agree at the outset to make it 
 a sharer in the family estate, as it will be entitled to 
 be if legally adopted. It is not a patrimony that the 
 child wants. It is a good, honest, capable American 
 bringing up. Finally, the matter of adoption may 
 safely be left to time and the inclinations of the parties. 
 If the child makes its way into the holy of holies of 
 the hearts of its foster parents, as is so often the case, 
 that child will be adopted soon enough and will, be 
 made heir, not only at law, but in love and affection. 
 
 Indenture In some states children are indentured 
 rather than adopted. The New York law is quite 
 specific on the point. This is done where the child is 
 old enough to learn a trade or occupation and to render 
 a service commensurate w r ith the advantage. Some 
 times in such cases an agreement stands the child in 
 good stead, but not often. It tends to make the relation 
 more permanent and not to be terminated because of 
 some whim ; but in all such cases the child needs some 
 next of kin, or friend of the court, to preserve the 
 child s rights, and indenture without a system of vis 
 itation that insures the protection of the child in its 
 rights is hardly worth the paper it is written on. 
 
 At Good Will Perhaps the best w r ay of placing out 
 children is to first use great care in selecting the home 
 and the child, and in fitting the child into the home 
 intelligently, and then leave both home and child to 
 endure each other so long as a mutuality of good will 
 exists. This arrangement may seem a little loose, but 
 it offers the advantage of making it comparatively 
 easy to remedy a mistake if one occur, and it gives all 
 needed opportunity for the child to grow into the 
 family heart and so become part and parcel thereof. 
 This arrangement inclines people to take the risk of 
 undertaking to rear a stranger child, and does not at 
 all stand in the way of loving it as an own child the 
 real aim of every placing out. 
 
98 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 Compulsory Support Compelling any relative other 
 than father and mother to support a dependent child 
 may save something to the state, but is likely to inflict 
 great hardship upon the child. It better bents a nar 
 row-minded community where a dollar of tax looks 
 like an impending disaster than it does a great com 
 monwealth solicitous for the proper discharge of its 
 duty as ultimate guardian. On the other hand, com 
 pulsory enforcement of parental duty often results in 
 redeeming the parents to reputable living. There is an 
 innate justice in it that commends it to the conscience 
 and understanding of the most depraved and shiftless 
 of mankind, and as compulsion usually goes with a 
 helping hand to secure employment, and a probationary 
 hostage to good conduct, efforts at compulsory parental 
 support generally work out to the mutual advantage 
 of all concerned. 
 
 Desertion of Family This is a problem to which the 
 best sociological thought is giving close attention. It 
 is not the father who can not support his family who 
 deserts it, nor is it the man who is weighed down with 
 bodily affliction or racked with the pains of accumulat 
 ing years. It is the beast of a man, in the full hey-dey 
 of manly vigor, who finds the care of a family a burden 
 and that the burden stands in the w r ay of the fuller 
 gratification of his own physical appetites. He wants 
 to spend all his earnings on himself, and what he needs 
 is a good dose of cat-o -nine tails. What his family 
 needs, though, is to make him perform his duties as 
 husband and father. 
 
 This can be done if only some one will do it. Ordi 
 nary officers will not. A probationary court can, if 
 there be a society to take the initial steps. It must be 
 a question of rotting in jail or going to work to support 
 the family, and that probation must be continuous 
 until the man has formed habits of industry and recon 
 ciled himself to his duty. Mere severity of the law will 
 not suffice. In fact, it tends to bar the way toward 
 
ODDS AND ENDS OF THE CHILD PROBLEM. 99 
 
 reforming the innn by creating sympathy for him. It 
 is just as well to have desertion a misdemeanor as a 
 felony if only something- can be done about it. Six 
 months in jail, with an alternative of going to work, 
 is as good as a year, and it has been decided that a 
 culprit may be extradited for a misdemeanor as well 
 as for a felony. 
 
 It is the favorite trick of these men to run over an 
 adjacent state line and then wriggle their fingers in 
 the faces of their late neighbors. A few prompt extra 
 ditions have, in eastern states, had a most wholesome 
 influence. A certainty of having the law meted out 
 to this form of malefactor will work a radical reform 
 in conduct. At present a certainty that nothing what 
 ever will be done about it makes this one of the most 
 exasperating and prevalent social evils workers among 
 dependent childhood have to deal with. It costs Cali-. 
 fornia, state and counties, tens of thousands annually. 
 
 After Fourteen, What? It is well known that state 
 aid to dependent childhood ceases at fourteen years o: 
 age. After that, then what becomes of the children 
 There is now no one in California capable of full} 
 answering this question. The State Board of Charities 
 and Corrections is at work on it, but is, as I understand 
 not ready to report. It is about the most vulnerable 
 period of a child s life. Perhaps the girl is a little 
 more in danger at sixteen, but at fourteen neither t 
 boy nor a girl is fit for the responsibilities of self-direc 
 tion, the more especially if the. previous six or eigh 
 years have been spent in an orphanage. They need to 
 be looked out for as much then as ever, but mos 
 orphanages find ways of washing their hands of al 
 responsibility for them. Not all do so. Some find work 
 for them and keep in touch with them while they may 
 but none of the orphanages with which I am acquainted 
 is financially able to follow them. 
 
 Here is another good sphere of activity for the State 
 Board of Charities and Corrections. By a system of 
 
100 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 visitation and work-finding for these children of four 
 teen many of them may be saved to reputable life who 
 are now lost to it. In its admirable Technical school in 
 San Francisco the Catholic Church is providing for 
 such of these as are girls and as are capable of becoming 
 expert seamstresses. Los Angeles needs another insti 
 tution of that kind, but even if it had one these two 
 could care for only a small part of the Catholic chil 
 dren. The Episcopal Church is doing a good work in 
 San Francisco also, but practical benevolence can find 
 a boundless sphere of utility here. The child who goes 
 out of an orphanage should not be let go of until it has 
 come to the period of self-realization, and that period 
 is seldom reached until somewhere between eighteen 
 and twenty-one years of age. Some eastern states 
 carry along the period of public help to sixteen years 
 of age instead of fourteen, but that does not so much 
 better things. It is not safe to let go altogether until 
 the dawn of common sense has burst forth efful gentry. 
 
 Health in Orphanages It is due to our California 
 orphanages to say of them that, almost without excep 
 tion, the general health of their wards is good, much 
 better than that of an equal number of children out 
 side. Institutional life is healthful most everywhere. 
 There is plenty of plain living if not a superabundance 
 of high thinking, and the regularity of the life, the 
 going to bed at a certain hour and the getting up at 
 another, the inability to run to the cupboard and to 
 buy candies and jim-cracks all these things are con 
 ducive to good health, sound sleep and able-bodied 
 digestions. Remember this to their credit. 
 
 The Reward of Success The successful coping with 
 the problem of delinquent and dependent childhood 
 almost involves the issue of the progress of the human 
 race. No civilization can endure half criminal and half 
 exemplary, or even a tenth criminal and nine-tenths 
 above serious reproach. In fact, the whole burden of 
 institutional life, which, in one form or another, em- 
 
THE FEEBLE-MINDED CHILD. 101 
 
 braces all of dependency and all of criminality, hardly 
 concerns one person in the hundred, and yet how great 
 is that burden. It is practically the hundredth man 
 who creates the whole problem of government. Elim 
 inate that man, and prevent his place being filled by 
 another, and the courts may take vacations three- 
 quarters of the year, the prison doors be thrown off 
 the hinges and the asylums razed to the ground. And 
 the problem of the hundredth man of to-morrow is the 
 problem of the dependent and delinquent child of 
 to-day. The reward of success in dealing with this 
 problem is the emancipation of the race. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 THE FEEBLE-MINDED CHILD. 
 
 The output of watches in the great factory at 
 Waltham, Massachusetts, is said to be about 3000 per 
 day. In each day s output there are some 250 or 300 
 timepieces which will not run. They were made by 
 the same persons who made the successful watches and 
 with the aid of the same splendidly appointed machin 
 ery, but the wheels will not go round. Long experience 
 has demonstrated the futility of trying to discover and 
 remedy the deficiencies of these watches and, inasmuch 
 as they are metal and not flesh and blood, they are 
 thrown into the scrap heap and melted up. 
 
 About the same percentage of children born in Massa 
 chusetts are similarly deficient. They are born of the 
 same parents as other perfectly normal children, but 
 somehow the inscrutable mechanism which provides 
 for replenishing the earth with human kind scores the 
 most dismal failures imaginable in one out of each 
 250 or 300 attempts, and society is burdened with a 
 more or less serious problem of maintaining these 
 imbeciles while they live. 
 
102 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 Other Reasons Why This is not saying that there 
 are no known methods for accounting for feeble-mind- 
 edness in children. There are some such methods fairly 
 well known to the medical profession, but there are 
 more assumptions of knowledge than ascertained truths. 
 There are reasons to suppose that attempts at race 
 suicide have resulted in the birth of feeble-minded 
 progeny. It is almost a certainty that the offspring of 
 feeble-minded persons will be feeble-minded, although 
 this does not always follow. Alcoholism may be 
 charged with from 7 or 8 to 331/3 per cent, owing to 
 the predisposition of the mind of the statistician 
 toward alcoholics. 
 
 Whatever the primary cause may be there is reason 
 to believe that the immediate cause is the malnutrition 
 of the unborn child. The product is what is slangily 
 termed "half baked," when it should mean half fed. 
 Statistical information of a truly scientific character 
 is wanting, because the data obtained are incomplete 
 and dependent upon what the relatives are of a mind 
 to tell. However, this much is known, there are many 
 thousands of feeble-minded persons in every common 
 wealth, ranging all the way from the border line of 
 normal mentality down to idiocy of such a pronounced 
 character as to make the subjects to all intents 
 swaddled and diapered infants, to be cared for as such 
 through all the days of their lives. 
 
 The Situation in California The California Home 
 for Feeble-Minded at Eldridge is caring for 550 inmates. 
 It has been estimated that there are 2000 more feeble 
 minded children in the state who are eligible for admis 
 sion and who need to be cared for. This would account 
 for only one feeble-minded person in California to each 
 750 of population or thereabouts. That there are many 
 more can hardly be questioned. Every physician in 
 his private practice knows of one or more persons who 
 are distinctly feeble-minded. Then there are numbers 
 so near the border line as to be burdens upon the 
 
THE FEEBLE-MINDED CHILD. 10:] 
 
 public in one form or another, generally in the produc 
 tion of pauperism and criminality because irresponsible 
 and unequal to a single-handed contest with the world 
 into which they were badly born. 
 
 What Can be Done for Them A feeble-minded child 
 is much like other children save that it is feeble-minded. 
 Its mind is not a blank. Idiocy is only a more aggra 
 vated type of feeble-mindedness, and not, as many 
 suppose, a different thing, and even an idiot can be 
 taught. Many feeble-minded children can be taught a 
 great deal, and their working capacity may in many 
 instances be developed to the point of making them 
 self-sustaining, but no feeble-minded person will ever 
 become self -directing. That consummation of intellec 
 tual power known as common sense will never be 
 vouchsafed to them and, wanting it, they must be 
 looked after and their lives ordered by others than 
 themselves. The acme of achievement for them is to 
 be raised to the condition of cleanly, moral, happy and 
 self-sustaining existence. By the percentage of its 
 inmates which are raised above the custodial grade is 
 the success or failure of an institution for the feeble 
 minded to be determined. 
 
 Custodial cases are those which have to be handled 
 like infants and are set down as not teachable. Judged 
 by this standard a great difference will be found to 
 exist among institutions devoted to this work through 
 out the country. California s institution at Eldridge, 
 through lack of an adequate teaching force, is not 
 very near the head of the column. The obligation 
 which society owes to God and humanity is to make 
 the most of these unfortunates that the material in 
 them will allow, and to lift the burden of their care 
 off the shoulders of those families who have this man 
 ner of skeleton in the family closet. It is the body of 
 death chained to the living and from which they should 
 be freed if they can be. Often they are no more at 
 fault in the; matter than the makers of the Waltham 
 
104 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 watches that would not go, but even if they have sinned 
 their punishment has been greater than they can bear 
 without sacrificing all there is of life worth the living. 
 California should enlarge its capacity for caring for 
 these unfortunates. 
 
 Not All Born So It is by no means true that all 
 feeble-minded children were born so. In many cases 
 this condition has resulted from scarlet fever, measles, 
 brain fever, or from some untoward accident or injury. 
 It is a calamity that may come upon any one at any 
 time of life, but of course the greater number are con- 
 genitally deficient. In either event the state s duty is 
 the same. It is to bear one another s burdens when 
 the individual burden is too great to be borne. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 SOME INSTITUTIONS FOR THE FEEBLE-MINDED. 
 
 It will be impossible to fully describe all the institu 
 tions I visited that are devoted to the care of feeble 
 minded persons, but I shall point out some of the salient 
 features of some of them. There are many in the 
 country that I did not so much as catch a glimpse of, 
 but those mentioned here rank well toward the front 
 so far as common reputation goes. 
 
 At Fort Wayne, Indiana This institution was estab 
 lished in 1879 and contained 1042 patients on the day 
 of my visit. Children are received between 6 and 16 
 years of age, women between 16 and 45. The children 
 are admitted voluntarily, but the women are committed 
 by order of court. Seventy-five per cent of the inmates 
 are regarded as teachable and for their instruction 
 twelve teachers are employed. California, with more 
 than half as many patients, has, until very recently, 
 had but two teachers and now has but three. 
 
 All teaching of the feeble-minded must be individual, 
 
SOME INSTITUTIONS FOR THE FEEBLE-MINDED. 105 
 
 1)1 it even at Fort Wayne each teacher has 26 to 30 
 children in her charge each half day, or 52 to 60 during 
 the entire day, for there are half-day sessions. No 
 teacher should have above 12 or 15 feeble-minded 
 children in hand at a time, or 24 to 30 in a day. The 
 children are taught reading and writing and simple 
 numbers. They forget what they do not use. The 
 object in this institution is to educate to the point of 
 happiness, but not beyond it, to the point of dissatis 
 faction with life. 
 
 This institution makes and repairs with the labor of 
 its inmates all the shoes required, makes all the boys 
 clothing and all the clothing for the girls except the 
 knit goods. The boys make their own clothes except 
 shirts, which the girls make for them. A farm of 308 
 acres of good land, and 97 acres more rented, is suc 
 cessfully cultivated by the men and boys with only 
 enough hired labor to direct the work. There are 100 
 in the working force. There are nine industrial teachers 
 besides those above mentioned. 
 
 At Elwyn, Pennsylvania This is one of the biggest 
 and best known institutions for the care of feeble 
 minded persons in this country and it enjoys a de 
 servedly high reputation. I found here 1059 charges 
 upon 337 acres of land. Of these, 500 were in the train 
 ing department, and 100 others were being trained 
 outside of the training department. I found, however, 
 three cottages filled with cases classed as custodial, 
 and, if I am not greatly deceived, about two-fifths of 
 the total population is set down as custodial and not 
 susceptible of being taught. How greatly this differs 
 from some other institutions will be seen farther on. 
 
 I think that this is the principal, and perhaps the 
 only, criticism that Elwyn deserves that it classes as 
 custodial a very large number of its wards that might 
 have been lifted greatly above that disgusting and 
 almost intolerable grade known as* custodial. Admis 
 sions are from 7 to 14 years, but the inmates may re- 
 
106 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 main for life when once admitted. There are between 
 1000 and 1500 on the waiting list. About one-third 
 of the inmates attend school, and for their instruction 
 twenty teachers are employed. Sloyd in various forms 
 constitutes the basis of instruction, and a good deal 
 of mechanical ability and skill are developed. In fact, 
 Elwyn can show a higher degree of attainment along 
 this line than perhaps any other similar institution in 
 America, but a high average is attained more through 
 lifting the few quite high than through lifting the 
 entire mass above the custodial line. 
 
 There is much of hammock-making, carpet-weaving 
 of Norwegian tapestry, basketry and the making of 
 mattresses and of such furniture as the institution re 
 quires. Many can do this work who can not be taught 
 to read or to w^rite. The custodial cases on the male 
 wards are handled by men and their wives, a system 
 that works well and makes for improved behavior. 
 
 New Jersey Training School for Feeble-Minded 
 
 There are two state institutions for the care of the 
 feeble-minded at Vineland, New Jersey, just across the 
 road from each other. One is for young women, which 
 will be mentioned in the next chapter, and one for 
 feeble-minded boys and girls. I found here 350 in 
 mates, occupying twelve industrial and other buildings 
 and eight residence cottages. This institution is owned 
 and conducted by a benevolent association, and the 
 state boards its feeble-minded wards with it at $275 
 per child per year for custodial cases. If the inmate 
 be self-supporting the state pays nothing for its sup 
 port ; if partially so the state pays such a part of its 
 support as may be agreed upon. Some are paid for 
 as low as $25 per year, and quite a number at $50, and 
 so on up to $275, which is the limit. The ages of ad 
 mission are 5 to 21 years, but some women are admitted 
 older than that. The institution has a farm of 200 
 acres and it yields an income of $10,000 to $11,000 a 
 year, almost wholly with inmate labor. 
 
SOME INSTITUTIONS FOR THE FEEBLE-MINDED. 107 
 
 This institution is intensely alive. Its superintendent, 
 Mr. Edward R. Johnstone, has organized a staff of con 
 sulting psychologists, which holds regular sessions at 
 the school for the study of the phenomenon of feeble 
 mindedness. He has also organized a summer school 
 for teachers who are to work with backward children 
 in cities, to the end that they may observe the processes 
 of mental development among feeble-minded where the 
 processes of mental unfoldment are so slow as to be 
 readily perceived. This has proven very helpful to 
 teachers engaged in that much-needed work. 
 
 Although the inmates of this institution are all so 
 feeble-minded as to be incapable of intelligent self- 
 direction, they are made the most of that the material 
 will allow. The system of discipline is based entirely 
 upon rewards, but not at all upon punishments, and 
 for five years no child has been whipped. It is be 
 lieved that thirty per cent of all the inmates can be 
 made self-sustaining after ten years of training, but, as 
 previously stated, not self-directing. Not over one- 
 sixth are purely custodial. All must be kept going. 
 Without tireless enthusiasm everything will come to 
 a full stop. There is no resting on the oars in that 
 institution. 
 
 A unique feature of the educational department is 
 a well-equipped zoo of all the more common live things 
 that live in the country, and some that do not. There 
 are monkeys, badgers, squirrels, coons, many kinds of 
 birds, etc. The children are made acquainted with 
 them all, to the great stimulation of their interest and 
 intellectual activity. 
 
 The industrial feature is very strong and intelligent, 
 but, during the growing season, all else except the mere 
 supplying of daily wants is laid aside for the pushing 
 of the farm work. The boys handle the farm proper, 
 the girls the vegetable garden and orchard. This is 
 much better for them than shop work, which is done 
 up in winter. 
 
 Another feature not by any means to be overlooked 
 
108 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 is the store. What are known as "o. k." slips, de 
 noting good conduct, are translatable into currency of 
 , that realm of graded values, according to conduct, of 
 one cent to seven cents for a definite time. The store 
 is opened for a part of a day every so often, and the 
 children with good slips are able to buy such things 
 as appeal to their childish fancies. If they have not 
 been good, and have not put forth effort, they can not 
 buy; if they have, they can. It pays to be good and, 
 feeble-minded though they be, the inmates not infre 
 quently husband their savings against the time when 
 they shall have enough to purchase some one thing of 
 great desire. "Honorable mention" is another stimu 
 lant to mental and moral exertion, and the few who get 
 the most honorable mentions in the year are taken to 
 Philadelphia to see the wonders of the great city. 
 
 The Vineland institution is a beehive of activity and 
 originality, and there is small reason to doubt that it 
 is making of its charges about as much as the material 
 that God put into them will allow. The custodial con 
 tingent is reduced to a very low, if not to the lowest, 
 possible terms. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 FROM WAVERLY TO TEMPLETON. 
 
 If a special chapter be devoted to the Massachusetts 
 system of caring for the feeble-minded it is because, 
 in the opinion of the writer, the system deserves it as 
 pointing the way toward better things for- the feeble 
 minded wards of the several states. 
 
 At Waverly The parent institution is at Waverly, 
 a few miles out of Boston. It is splendidly located, 
 well equipped with model buildings of substantial con 
 struction and has a housing capacity sufficient for per 
 haps 900 inmates and 100 or more attendants. The 
 demand for admissions far exceeds the power to ac 
 commodate, for it has been estimated that there are 
 
FROM WAVKRLY TO TKMPLETON. 10!) 
 
 20,000 feeble-minded persons in Massachusetts. The 
 whole institution, together with the colony at Temple- 
 ton, is under the immediate charge of Dr. Walter E. 
 Fernald, whom Massachusetts imported from Wisconsin 
 because he had made a reputation in his own state. 
 
 The institution is on state land, and mainly supported 
 by state money, but it is managed largely through the 
 original benevolent corporation that entered upon the 
 work in the days of the beneficent activities of Dr. 
 Samuel G. Howe. The state appoints six directors and 
 the corporation six. But two changes in the directorate 
 can be made each two years, and so no radical changes 
 take place. Some men are on the board whose grand 
 fathers were there before them, and their own fathers, 
 too. The success of the institution is, to them, a matter 
 of pride and of love for defenseless humanity. It is all 
 outside of politics. 
 
 The Educational Work The educational work is 
 carried on in this institution very much as it is in the 
 public schools, except that it is all individual, and 
 except that the feebleness of mind and dullness of 
 mental perception make progress slow, and cause inter 
 minable drafts upon the patience and the integrity of 
 the teachers. Nowhere else have I seen such devotion 
 as is daily manifested here. Of 1015 inmates only 
 betw r een 45 and 50, through sickness or idiocy, were 
 classed as of so low grade that nothing could be given 
 them in the way of instruction or training for lifting 
 them above their lowly condition. A dog could be 
 taught in a tenth of the time to do certain things that 
 these children must be taught to do and understand 
 if they are to be lifted above the lowliest of God s 
 sentient beings. 
 
 The Kindergarten The first step toward enlighten 
 ment consists in being made to discriminate between a 
 red ball and a blue or white one, go get it when it has 
 been rolled across the courtyard, and fetch it back to 
 the teacher. Perhaps a hundred times the child must 
 
110 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 be taken by the hand by the teacher and be made to 
 run after the ball, have it put into its hand, be run 
 back with, and then start again the same way, before 
 the child will gain intelligence enough to go after it of 
 its own accord, pick up its own ball and not another s, 
 and bring it back. This accomplished, it is made to 
 see if it can not do it quicker than another child. When 
 Johnny has accomplished that feat the news spreads 
 all over the institution and there is great joy from the 
 superintendent down. Another exercise, and education 
 is to first pile a lot of convenient sized stones around 
 a tree in pyramidal form, and then move them, -on a 
 succeeding day, and put them around another tree. 
 All that is done is done under the stimulus of a "hurrah 
 boys, hurry, hurry, hurry-up" spirit, of which no one 
 but a woman teacher is capable. The kindergarten 
 laboratory contains perhaps $1500 worth of contriv 
 ances calculated to awaken interest in a childish mind 
 and so teach it to discriminate between colors, forms 
 and feelings to the sense of touch. 
 
 Elemental Educational Work Here we see the pro 
 cesses of the education of the human mind laid bare, 
 link by link, step by step. The agencies employed, and 
 which must find place in all educational processes, are 
 physical training, competitive play and manual train 
 ing. The running after the balls thrown across the 
 courtyard, the carrying of the stones from tree to tree, 
 brings the muscles, that have been little used, into 
 action and strengthens them. The effort to do the 
 thing quicker than another child sharpens the wits 
 and excites enthusiasm. Finally, the manual training, 
 which follows through the course, trains the hand and 
 eye and stimulates mental activity through motor 
 centers. 
 
 The Result By this course of training, in a hundred 
 varied forms I have no space for describing, the feeble 
 minded misfits of nature are strengthened in mind and 
 body until, as a whole, they are able to provide for 
 
FROM WAVKUI.Y TO TEMPLETON. Ill 
 
 nearly all of the needs of the community save the 
 creation of the raw materials. The girls make the 
 clothes for the whole thousand and more, keep them 
 in repair, and do the laundry work. The boys do the 
 shoe-making, printing, carpentering, painting, garden- 
 making, and take care of the grounds. All wash dishes, 
 make beds, scrub floors, and the brighter ones help to 
 take care of those not so bright. Only the best trained 
 teachers are given places in the institution. The duller 
 the child the better the teachers must be, and the more 
 love and enthusiasm must they have for their work. 
 
 Templeton Every institution that receives young 
 persons for life custody will, if it makes no provision 
 for an outlet, inevitably become clogged with unteach- 
 able, unprogressive and practically dead human timber. 
 To furnish an outlet for at least the male product of 
 this institution the state of Massachusetts, some years 
 since, purchased 2000 acres of practically abandoned 
 farms in the north-central part of the commonwealth. 
 The old buildings were renovated, and new ones erected 
 necessary for the care and comfort of fifty adult, male 
 feeble-minded at each homestead of fifty acres or so. 
 It is costing about $10,000 to make ready at each place 
 and there are now four homesteads in operation. Some 
 time there may be a score or more of them. There is 
 plenty of rough work for the men to do, such as blast 
 ing out rocks and hauling them from the fields, making 
 roads, clearing up the underbrush, cultivating the 
 ground, caring for the stock, etc. And there they are 
 to spend their lives under careful superintendence, 
 but practically paying their own way" pulling their 
 own weight," as President Roosevelt would express it. 
 Better men than they have, for two centuries, given 
 their lives to the cultivation of these farms, and why 
 not these feeble-minded wards of the state? They are 
 healthy, they are happy, they are in the care of a good 
 man and wife and three assistant attendants and, if 
 they go to bed good and tired at night, it is to fall 
 
112 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 to sleep without those evil practices which otherwise 
 make institutional life bestial beyond endurance. 
 Judged by any standard I know anything of, the 
 Massachusetts system of caring for the feeble-minded 
 is exemplary. Nothing for show, everything for com 
 fort, intellectual and moral development and for 
 genuine utility. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 THE FEEBLE-MINDED WOMAN. 
 
 Of all forms of human prey the most pitifully helpless 
 and certain of destruction is the feeble-minded girl so 
 near the border line of normal mentality as not to be 
 altogether repulsive, yet so feeble in intellect and 
 understanding as to be incapable of the exercise of any 
 resistant strength of will. There are many such in 
 every commonwealth and their progeny is legion and 
 are to be found in every form of institutional life from 
 homes for the feeble-minded to prison house and insane 
 asylum. They fall into the arms of the most depraved 
 of men and there can be no doubt as to the offspring 
 of imbecility mated with criminality. The elemental 
 principle of self-preservation demands that organized 
 society find some way to sequester feeble-minded women 
 of child-bearing age so that they shall be beyond the 
 reach of the opposite sex, at least during the child- 
 bearing period of their lives. The belated world is 
 only just moving in that direction, and it would seem 
 that California should at least manage to keep up with 
 the procession. 
 
 Harper Lodge Indiana has begun to do something 
 in the direction of sequestering feeble-minded women 
 of child-bearing age by the establishment of Harper 
 Lodge, as it is called, at Fort Wayne, as an adjunct to 
 the State Home for Feeble-Minded Children. I found 
 there 130 women unmistakably feeble-minded, but of 
 so low a grade that it would seem as though their 
 natural repulsiveness should have been their ample 
 
THE FEEBLE-MINDED WOMAN. 113 
 
 protection, but such had not proven, to be the case. 
 M-my of them had become mothers already and their 
 progeny were in the adjacent institution. 
 
 These women are committed to the institution by the 
 courts between the ages of 16 and 45, are well cared 
 for, are employed in housekeeping and gardening and 
 are well off if not very contented or happy. The trouble 
 with this institution is that its inmates are of a grade 
 so low that they should have been in the adjacent 
 institution from childhood. That isn t going far 
 enough. The line needs to be drawn much closer to 
 the line of normality, but Indiana has made a start in 
 the right direction while California has not made even 
 a conscious start, although a few women of that char 
 acter are confined in the Home at Eldridge, which 
 hardly knows what to do with them because not pre 
 pared for them. 
 
 The New Jersey Home for Feeble-Minded Women 
 
 Vineland, New Jersey, has two institutions for the care 
 of feeble-minded persons, just across the road from 
 each other. The one for children has already been 
 described. The one for the care and training of feeble 
 minded women is now seventeen years old, has well- 
 appointed buildings and about 150 inmates under the 
 care of a woman physician and superintendent. I saw 
 a considerable portion of the inmates, and quite a 
 number of them seemed to me to be distinctly high- 
 grade imbeciles, not very far below the normality line 
 in a good many instances. Still, the institution is 
 more of a school than of a permanent home through 
 the child-bearing period and therefore falls short of 
 the essential purpose which New Jersey should have 
 in view. 
 
 Other States New York has a large institution for 
 women of this class, but I was not able to visit it. 
 Massachusetts has set apart one building for the ac 
 commodation of this class at Waverly, but that is an 
 altogether insufficient provision. Many, if not most, 
 
114 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 of the inmates of this cottage had made criminal records 
 before being sequestered and are hard to handle under 
 existing conditions at Waverly. 
 
 The Plain Need The plain need is that such women 
 be gathered together by every state in the Union where 
 they can be preserved from harm, but where they can 
 be employed for their own and the public advantage. 
 They need to be protected from harm and the state 
 needs to be protected from them. They should be 
 made readily self-sustaining as far as earning capacity 
 is concerned. As it can hardly be supposed that a 
 state will establish independent institutions at the out 
 set, they should at least establish adjuncts to homes 
 already in existence similar to Harper Lodge at Fort 
 Wayne. I recommend this policy to California and 
 suggest that a cottage be built at Eldridge, at some 
 distance from the other group of buildings, to be main- 
 tained under the same general management, and that 
 the inmates be established in the business of manu 
 facturing hosiery on a basis that will give them an 
 individual earning power above the cost of their mainte 
 nance. It will cost something at the start, but every 
 dollar expended will be saved a hundredfold in the 
 consequent diminution of crime and pauperism in the 
 future. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 EPILEPSY. 
 
 Epilepsy has been described to me as an explosion 
 of the vital forces of the body that should have lasted 
 all day if consumed gradually as the demands of life 
 required. We are all of us possible epileptics. A con 
 dition of affairs is conceivable which might cause any 
 individual to suffer a seizure, but in most cases that 
 consummation is not at all probable. Epilepsy is not 
 believed to be a disease so much as a symptom of a 
 disease one of whose manifestations is a sudden libera 
 tion of vital forces needful for orderly living. 
 
EPILEPSY. 11-") 
 
 Science Hard at Work-- There is a great deal that 
 science does not know about epilepsy, but it does not 
 confess itself baffled. At the Craig Colony, New York, 
 an expert pathologist is doing nothing but studying 
 epilepsy in all its forms and details, cellular contruc- 
 tion, digestive juices, the constitution of the blood 
 and the brain and whatever else he can get hold of 
 relating to the subject. Perhaps nothing very pro 
 nounced has been gained yet, but it is not improbable 
 that the mystery of acquired epilepsy may be solved. 
 
 Hereditary Tendency While the life histories of 
 epileptics are not so fully and certainly obtained as to 
 be of great scientific accuracy, still they are of value 
 and suffice to show that the epileptics of one generation 
 are very often, if not always, the progeny of a preceding 
 generation of alcoholics, epileptics or insane persons. 
 In all 56 per cent of 1070 cases studied at Craig Colony 
 showed parental responsibility in some direct way, as, 
 for instance, 16 per cent by direct heredity from epi 
 leptics, 14 per cent from alcoholics, 9 per cent from 
 insanity in parents and 13 per cent had parents who 
 were tuberculous. In 50 cases out of 508 examined 
 epilepsy had been brought upon the patient by his 
 abuse of alcoholic beveraes. 
 
 The Epileptic Colony Idea Most states have their 
 epileptics scattered, as California has, through all their 
 public institutions. They are to be found in orphan 
 ages, reform schools, prisons, many of them at the 
 Home for Feeble-blinded, and very many of them in 
 all of the hospitals for the insane. New York and 
 Massachusetts, at least, have undertaken to gather 
 them together in colonies where they can be separated 
 into classes, with regard to feeble-mindedness, insanity, 
 criminality and normality, too, for many are much like 
 other people only that they are subject to this distress 
 ing affliction. By bringing them together in that way 
 they can be studied to better advantage, they are less 
 
116 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 of an affliction to others, and often something of a 
 comfort to each other. The colony idea is at once an 
 economical, humane and practical method of caring 
 for these unfortunates, and the time will come when 
 California will feel the necessity, and the moral prompt 
 ings, for establishing an epileptic colony for the relief 
 of the other institutions and the welfare of the epi 
 leptics themselves. 
 
 Craig Colony at Sonyea, New York This is the 
 largest, and perhaps the most noted institution of its 
 kind in the United States. It is located about forty 
 miles south of Rochester on a tract of 2000 acres of 
 land that once constituted a Shaker settlement. The 
 land is good and yields a return of about $35,000 a 
 year toward the support of the institution, which cares 
 for 1200 patients now, but will be able to care for 
 2000. There are believed to be 14,000 epileptics in 
 New York state. 
 
 There are about sixty buildings on the place, and 
 will be seventy when the plans are finished. There are 
 thirty-odd cottages for patients. The average per 
 capita cost last year was $164. The state bears the 
 whole cost save as certain ones prefer to make a con 
 tribution toward their own support in order to take 
 off the taint of indigency. 
 
 Less than l 1 /^ per cent come to the institution while 
 the disease is in an acute, and before it reaches the 
 chronic, form. However, 7 per cent of the chronic 
 cases have been sent out as cured. This constitutes 
 15 per cent after deducting the imbeciles and dements 
 whose brains have been irreparably injured. Dr. 
 Spratling, the superintendent, is of opinion that 25 
 per cent of all committed could be cured if they could 
 be taken in hand in the early stages of the disease. 
 Ninety per cent have their minds more or less affected 
 by the disease, but only about 3 or 4 per cent terminate 
 in a continuous and active insanitv. 
 
EPILEPSY. 117 
 
 Palmer Colony This is the Massachusetts colony 
 for epileptics near the town of Palmer. There were 
 550 patients there at the time of my visit, all over 14 
 years of age, and nearly all therefore chronic cases. 
 This deprives the institution of its best opportunity to 
 study the disease in its acute form, and to effect en 
 couraging cures. In Massachusetts those who are able 
 to do so pay $5 per week for treatment, those who are 
 indigent are paid for by the towns from whence they 
 come at $3.25 per week, and the state pays for the 
 epileptic insane only. The institution at Palmer has 
 500 acres of rather rough land, a group of good central 
 buildings and a number of outlying cottages accommo 
 dating 30 or 35 patients each. There is one attendant 
 for each twelve or fifteen patients. Of the 550 patients 
 here only 25 are looked upon as really hopeful of being 
 permanently cured, and only two have, in eight years, 
 been discharged as permanently cured. 
 
 Hospital at Baldwins ville There is a hospital at 
 Baldwinsville where the state boards some of its 
 epileptics under 14 years of age. It is well appointed 
 and Dr. Page, its superintendent, seems to take a most 
 lively interest in the cases in hand. He gets cases 
 relatively early in their epileptic history, but still not 
 as early as he thinks he should receive them. At all 
 events he has a better chance to effect cures than they 
 have at the Palmer Colony, where only chronic cases are 
 received. Still, he can boast of no more than 10 per 
 cent of cures and, to do this, he has to call a child 
 cured who has not had a seizure for a year and w T ho 
 has been otherwise perfectly well. It was admitted 
 that medical treatment accomplished relatively little, 
 but that regimen and diet are more to be relied on than 
 medicine, although bromides are used with good effect. 
 
 Self -Control Best Drs. Flood, of Palmer, and Page, 
 of Baldwinsville, coincided in the view that a studious 
 and well-trained self-control holds out most hope for 
 
118 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 epileptics. They can bring seizures on by caprice, and 
 by self-control they can ward them off, especially in 
 youth, but parents humor their epileptic children so 
 universally that they are seldom schooled in even the 
 elements of self-control. 
 
 Operations Futile From persons with whom I con 
 versed I found little reliance placed upon surgical 
 operations. Sometimes the shock of the operation post 
 pones seizures for a season, but surgeons seldom have 
 any idea of what they expect to find when they have 
 operated and, more often than otherwise, merely go 
 into the cranial cavity to see if they may not blunder 
 on to something. This is intensely unscientific and 
 savors of quackery. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 THE DEAF. 
 
 There is one deaf person in each 1500 in the United 
 States. Some were born deaf, some were born to 
 become deaf and some were rendered deaf through 
 such diseases as scarlet fever, measles and, in later 
 years, cerebro-spinal meningitis, which formerly ter 
 minated fatally, but now spares the life, often leaving 
 the patient bereft of one or more of his senses. What 
 ever the cause, the affliction is calamitous and the un 
 fortunate victim must live, to a great degree, a shut-in 
 life. Without language a human being is almost a 
 hermit, no matter if he live in the heart of a great city. 
 The crux of the problem of teaching the deaf is to 
 enable them to get a good understanding of language 
 of some sort. There are several ways of doing this, 
 which will be separately, although briefly, considered. 
 
 The Sign Language This was the invention of Abbe 
 de 1 Epee, in 1775, creating almost as if by magic, a 
 language of some four hundred words aside from 
 
THE DEAF. X^ 119 
 
 proper names. There are many hearing persons who 
 use hardly more words than that, but of course they 
 are ignorant persons and have few ideas to convey. 
 Nearly all deaf persons, mute because deaf, use more 
 or less of the sign language. Children, in their plays, 
 make up their own signs and will use them in spite 
 of the opposition of their teachers, because quicker 
 and more convenient. The sign language is also useful 
 in talking to an audience of deaf persons too far 
 away to see the movements of the lips in speaking, 
 or of the fingers in the manual alphabet. Therefore, 
 something of the sign language gets into all systems of 
 teaching the deaf, if not in the schoolroom, then on the 
 playground. It is rapidly learned by deaf persons 
 trained to sagacity in such matters, but as for the 
 writer, although he has seen several discourses in the 
 sign language, he could make little out of them. 
 
 The Manual Alphabet This language is based on 
 the alphabet which we all of us use in reading and writ 
 ing, save that the letters are made with the fingers 
 and hands, very rapidly. The Rochester, New York, 
 school for deaf children is based entirely on the manual 
 alphabet, save that the oral method is also employed, 
 but the sign language is discouraged as being too 
 limited and not needed if the manual alphabet is 
 mastered. 
 
 The Oral Method This is based on lip reading. A 
 careful observation of the positions which the lips 
 assume, and the movements of the vocal chords as felt 
 from the outside, gives such a clew to what is being 
 said that an adept will catch the spoken words from 
 these movements without hearing a sound. Moreover, 
 one will also learn to repeat the sounds after some 
 fashion by reproducing the same lip and chord motions. 
 It takes much time and infinite patience to accomplish 
 this, and not many, who have never heard sounds, are 
 equal to it, but some are. Generally, their voices are 
 pitched in a strange key and have an unearthly tone, 
 
120 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 but the speakers are often able to make even strangers 
 understand, and most of the students will get so that 
 the members of their own families can converse with 
 them regularly. This is a great comfort and con 
 venience. 
 
 Much Controversy I visited four schools for the 
 deaf while I was on my pilgrimage, rather celebrated 
 ones, the school at Rochester, at Hartford, at New York, 
 and at Mount Airy, Pa., just out of Philadelphia. 
 There are seventy-five such schools in the country, so 
 that my investigations did not by any means exhaust 
 the subject. However, I found much tenacity of indi 
 vidual opinion, and not much agreement as to method, 
 but a kindly feeling for those with whom each champion 
 differed. As it seemed to me, all the schools came near 
 to using all the methods to greater or less extent. At 
 the other schools the consensus of opinion seemed to 
 be that the oral method hardly, as a whole, repaid the 
 intensity of effort that had to be put upon it, but the 
 school at Mount Airy was firmly of the opinion that it 
 was practically the only method worth while. 
 
 One Point of Agreement On one point of interest 
 to Calif ornians I found unhesitating agreement, not 
 only in the schools for the deaf, but also for the blind, 
 that the two schools, for deaf and blind, should not be 
 combined under one management. All testified that 
 there was a mutual antipathy between deaf and blind 
 and that it was out of the question for a single manage 
 ment to maintain enthusiasm for both branches of the 
 work at an equal intensity. The conviction was that 
 the blind usually were the sufferers. If the two classes 
 of children come into contact they make each other 
 unhappy and retard each other s progress. In both 
 cases the work of instructing those deprived of a sense 
 is so exacting that the pupils need all there is of their 
 instructors or superintendent need to absorb his very 
 being in order to reach a standard of attainment that 
 will make life on their part really successful. 
 
THE DEAF. 121 
 
 What California Should Do So long as Dr. Warring 
 Wilkinson conducts the affairs of the State School for 
 the Deaf and the Blind at Berkeley no attempt should 
 be made to divorce the two departments of the school, 
 but it is totally improbable that the state will be able 
 to secure a successor to him so fully equipped as he 
 for handling both departments of this form of edu 
 cational work and it will be to the best interests, 
 especially of the blind, to divorce the two and estab 
 lish an institution for the blind under a separate man 
 agement. The time will shortly come when the deaf 
 will be able to utilize all there is of the present insti 
 tution at Berkeley. It is devoutly to be hoped, 
 however, that the day of Dr. Wilkinson s separation 
 from the institution as it is may be far in the future. 
 I found that all of those whom I met, connected with 
 educational work, either of the blind or the deaf, 
 knew Dr. Wilkinson in person and by reputation and 
 took great pleasure in commending him for his high 
 character and distinguished services on behalf of the 
 afflicted. But, not being immortal, in the flesh, a day 
 of separation must some time come and the state 
 should be looking forward toward a proper policy to 
 be pursued when that event unfortunately transpires. 
 
 Something Out of the Ordinary At the great insti 
 tution on the banks of the Hudson in New York, where, 
 by the way, our own good Dr. Wilkinson found the 
 beginning of his life of splendid service to the causes 
 of the deaf and blind, I heard something that I should 
 never have dreamed of hearing. The school is con 
 ducted on the military system and many trophies have 
 been won in competition with crack military companies 
 in and around the great metropolis, but to be fully up 
 to military requirements a fife and drum corps was 
 wanted. With an enthusiasm born of unbounded con 
 fidence in the efficacy of training one of the officers of 
 the institution went to work to teach the deaf boys how 
 to play the fife, beat the drum and blow the bugle. 
 6 
 
122 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 It was a hard task, but it was completely accomplished. 
 A better fife and drum corps, or better bugle calls, I 
 never heard, and yet an even half of the ten or twelve 
 players hadn t even sound perception, and the others 
 could scarcely tell the bugle from the fife. Verily, 
 there is no limit to what training of ingenuous youth 
 may accomplish. 
 
 Science Has Done Little Science can boast of little 
 in the way of restoring hearing. The auditory mechan 
 isms are too hard to be gotten at, but this it has done : 
 It has prevented many from becoming deaf as the result 
 of disease. Investigations give practically the same 
 number of deaf children in New York state now that 
 there were thirty years ago, and yet the population of 
 the state has doubled meantime. The ounce of pre 
 vention has proven of more value than the pound 
 of cure. 
 
 Made Self -Sustaining There is no trouble about 
 making deaf persons self-sustaining. Those who have" 
 any mechanical ability can learn trades very well, 
 and others go into business of various kinds. The 
 methods of training in their school life require a good 
 deal of manual training if not exactly trade school 
 work, and some of the schools do teach such trades as 
 printing, carpentering, tailoring, and general house 
 work, dressmaking, etc. The great thing is to enable 
 the deaf person to so communicate with his fellows as 
 not to be forced to live a shut-in, and therefore unsatis 
 factory, existence. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 LEADING THE BLIND. 
 
 The last United States census showed one blind 
 person in the Union for each 1818 seeing persons. 
 Some of these were born blind, some were born to 
 become blind and very many were made blind by a 
 blundering want of care at birth. If the mother be 
 
LEADING THE BLIND. 123 
 
 afflicted with any one of a number of blood taints, 
 and the eyes be not at once cleansed with a weak 
 solution of boracic acid, or some other cleanly agent, 
 blindness is not unlikely to result within a few days, or 
 even hours, after birth from the poison. For this 
 reason physicians in attendance at childbirth often 
 wash the eyes of the babe as soon as the head is de 
 livered without waiting for the complete birth of the 
 baby. The result of this care is greatly to diminish 
 the percentage of those who have been thought to have 
 been born blind. 
 
 Language Easy The intellectual education of the 
 blind is a much simpler matter than that of the deaf, 
 and. for the reason that there is no barrier betwixt 
 them and the learning of their mother tongue. They 
 can both hear and talk as well as another. On the 
 contrary, perhaps four-fifths of the mental effort made 
 by the deaf is expended in a more or less vain effort 
 to grasp the full meaning and import of words and the 
 ability to use them. It is to be doubted if the best 
 educated deaf person that ever was really grasped the 
 entire significance of language. as a cultivated hearing 
 person ordinarily does. The mind of the blind, if not 
 the vision, is at least open and this facilitates their 
 education immeasurably. 
 
 Sense Judgments Difficult Per contra, the great 
 struggle of the blind is to form sense judgments, to 
 come into an appreciative contact with the real things 
 by which they are surrounded. This is as easy to the 
 deaf as to the hearing, but it is more difficult for the 
 blind than it is for the deaf to learn language, and the 
 whole range of color is shut out from the blind for 
 ever. There is no good reason Avhy any deaf person, 
 being otherwise well endo\ved, should be incapable of 
 self-support, but there are few things that the blind 
 can do with their hands in competition with the seeing, 
 and especially in competition with modern labor-saving 
 machinery. Hence their industrial education is diffi 
 cult and not very encouraging. 
 
124 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 Manual Training In the institutions for the educa 
 tion of the blind which I visited I found manual train 
 ing occupying a very pronounced place in the educa 
 tional course, not primarily because it was expected 
 that the blind would learn industrial trades, but be 
 cause it afforded the best possible education in the 
 formation of sense judgments and in the general and 
 accurate use of the members of the body. I saw sloyd 
 models worked out by children who could not tell day 
 light from darkness that would make the best of seeing 
 children look to their laurels, but, of course, progress 
 was relatively slow and the demands on their patience 
 extreme. That is one thing a blind person must learn 
 that time is of small concern. It is the end to be 
 attained that is important. Still, the enthusiasm for 
 sloyd work among blind children is very great. 
 
 Competition As I have before stated, competition 
 between blind fingers and the fingers of those who can 
 see is much to the disadvantage of those who can not 
 see, and it is increasingly and most discouragingly so 
 in the case of competition with modern labor-saving 
 machinery, which is all the time displacing hands 
 whether seeing or not. But competition in the realm 
 of intellectual life is scarcely less severe. Because one 
 is blind it does not follow that his intellectual endow 
 ment is any more liberal than that of ordinary mortals. 
 The sense of touch may become much more acute than 
 with those who see, and the sense of hearing may also 
 become more finely attuned, but blindness is a. barrier 
 to the full development of the intellectual life, because 
 it is, to the extent of blindness, shut out from the 
 means by which intellectuality is developed. Here 
 and there a blind person is able to make his way in 
 the world by his wits, as here and there one may with 
 his hands, but the rule is to the contrary. It is hard 
 for the blind to become fully self-sustaining if sustained 
 according to a fair standard of living such as seeing 
 persons from similar walks of life are permitted to 
 
LKVDING THE BLIND. 125 
 
 enjoy. Some do accomplish it, and education in a 
 school for the blind is a wonderful aid in that direction. 
 
 Some Interesting Figures Dr. Wait, of the New 
 York Institute for the Blind, has made some investi 
 gations of a statistical nature that are of great interest, 
 and I am indebted to him for the figures here given. 
 
 Of all the blind persons in the United States, as re 
 ported by the United States census, 6 to 7 per cent* are 
 under 10 years of age, and 12 to 13 per cent are between 
 10 and 20 years old. This makes about 20 per cent that 
 are of school age; school age in institutions for the 
 blind running from 6 to 21 or 22 years of age. Of all 
 those between these ages less than one-half are attend 
 ing schools for the blind. This is a great wrong on the 
 part of society and not at all creditable to our civiliza 
 tion. If, as we have reason to suppose, there are 80,000 
 blind persons in the United States, not more than 5 
 per cent of them are now in school, the census of the 
 institutions for the blind showing an enrollment of 
 4100 only. 
 
 In October, 1879, when a general inquiry was made, 
 it was found that there were 321 blind persons in the 
 various benevolent institutions in the state of New 
 York, such as almshouses, hospitals, etc. Of these, 
 only 21 had ever attended a school for the blind. Up 
 to that time 1800 young persons had passed through 
 the educational institutions for the blind in New York 
 state, showing that all but 21 of those so educated had 
 at any rate kept out of institutions for the care of 
 indigent persons. 
 
 Sixteen years later, 1895, during which time the 
 population of the state had increased by 2,000,000, 
 another census of the institutions for the care of indi 
 gent persons showed that there were only 276 blind 
 persons in such institutions in New York state. Of 
 these, only 17 had been trained in an institution for the 
 education of the blind, and yet, up to that time, 2600 
 had gone through the schools for the blind in New York, 
 
126 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 showing that almost all who had been properly trained 
 had at least kept out of the almshouses. 
 
 Another interesting fact is that among the 321 blind 
 persons who were in the almshouses in New York 
 state in 1879 thirty-two trades and professions were 
 represented, and among the 276 who were in the aims- 
 houses in 1895, thirty-five trades and professions were 
 represented, and these, had not sufficed to keep their 
 possessors out of the almshouses. 
 
 A Rational Goal to be Sought The issue of whether 
 or not the blind are to become self-sustaining is of 
 prime importance to public interests, because upon the 
 determination of that issue must depend the legislation 
 to be enacted and the policy to be pursued by the 
 commonwealth. The consensus of the best opinion that 
 I could gain from what seemed to me to be the most 
 expert authority and observation was about as fol 
 lows: 
 
 1. That those who become blind in adult age, and 
 who are dependent for their living upon industrial 
 pursuits, can not reasonably hope to become wholly 
 self-sustaining by any form of industrial activity to be 
 learned after suffering the loss of sight. 
 
 2. That in the cases of those who were born blind, 
 or who became blind in early years, manual training 
 is extremely important as a part of the intellectual 
 training, but even in their case the trade-school idea 
 is not to be commended. The commercial feature of 
 it interferes with intellectual development, and the 
 probable ability to compete on equal terms with see 
 ing labor and mechanical devices does riot warrant the 
 expenditure of effort, although a considerable number 
 will, as a result of the manual training received, be able 
 to earn their living. 
 
 3. There are a few occupations, such as typewriting, 
 piano-tuning, massage, and dealing in musical instru 
 ments, which combine a good degree of intellectual 
 capacity or talent with a good degree of manual skil; 
 and adaptability, which promise those thus liberally 
 
LEADING THE BLIND. 127 
 
 endoAved the opportunity for fully paying their own 
 way through the world with a reasonably high stand 
 ard of living. 
 
 4. All things considered, the brightest hope held out 
 to the blind is that they be educated along lines similar 
 to the best type of education for seeing people, in 
 cluding intellectual and manual training, to the end 
 that they may become companionable, cultivated and 
 helpful personalities in the home lives of their own 
 people. If they can not, by dint of manual skill, quite 
 pay their own way they can come so near it as to be 
 made welcome in the homes of their relatives and 
 friends and so be absorbed into the community life 
 without becoming public charges. There is a world 
 of difference between those who have been to a school 
 for the blind and those who have graduated from such 
 a school. The latter will be pretty sure to keep out 
 of the almshouses whatever else may befall them. 
 Those who become blind in adult life will have to be 
 supported, at least partially, either by private benevo 
 lence or at the public charge. 
 
 A Gross Injustice There are numberless homes for 
 the aged and infirm springing up all over the country. 
 They are a splendid form of private benevolence, but 
 for some reason not entirely clear, and very far from 
 being humane or even rational, blind persons are usually 
 excluded from such homes. There runs a notion 
 through the public mind that blind persons should be 
 sent to homes for the blind, whereas the fact is that 
 blindness is often the only bond of sympathy between 
 them. Blind persons of education and refinement are 
 presupposed to find just the social atmosphere neces 
 sary to their happiness if they can be brought into 
 relations with other blind persons, even though the 
 latter may be uneducated, unrefined and even immoral. 
 It is only necessary to have the case stated to make the 
 absurdity of this view perfectly apparent, yet those 
 limitations almost universally stand. If pressure, the 
 
128 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 pressure of common sense and common humanity, could 
 be brought to bear upon such institutions to have these 
 restrictions removed a great many blind persons would 
 be absorbed into them, to the unspeakable happiness of 
 the blind and without serious detriment to institutions 
 of this beneficent class. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 THE REFORMATORY. 
 
 The reformatory is a species of purgatory. It is a 
 last station prior to entering into a full condemnation 
 as being unfit to live at large. It is a place of expiation 
 and reformation, a place where the offended majesty 
 of the law may be satisfied, the face turned the other 
 way and the redemption of the individual to whole 
 some living be finally worked out. But it is a prison, 
 just as purgatory is believed by many to be a species 
 of hades. The punishment is remedial and disciplinary 
 rather than retributive, but there is punishment just 
 the same. It is no soft berth. 
 
 The Sif ting-Out Process A proper system of dealing 
 with criminal life will contemplate a careful system 
 of sifting out the tares from the wheat all the way 
 from the first false step to the final plunge into iniquity. 
 The first screen to pass the chaff over is the truant 
 officer who looks after the boys and girls who should 
 be in school, but are not, making use also of the parental 
 school. The juvenile court and probation officer come 
 next with their purpose to give the wayward another 
 chance and to enforce parental responsibility, making 
 such use as need be of the state reform schools, first 
 Whittier and then Preston school at lone. Next should 
 come the reformatory. 
 
 If these appliances be properly employed, of all those 
 who get off wrong foot first, the truant officer and 
 parental school should, roughly speaking, set 75 or 
 
THE REFORMATORY, 129 
 
 80 per cent back on the right track to remain there. 
 The juvenile court and the reform schools should return 
 to society, fit to live in it, 75 or 80 per cent of those 
 who slip through the meshes of the truant officer and 
 parental school. The state reformatory, when Cali 
 fornia shall establish one, should recover to decent 
 living 75 or 80 per cent of those who slip through the 
 meshes of the reform schools, and, finally, a state prison 
 should be able to return to society, in the course of time, 
 a very considerable percentage of those who have 
 graduated to it from the state reformatory, and it 
 should be able to keep those whom it can not redeem 
 where the dogs can not bite them. This is the sifting- 
 out process toward which California is unconsciously 
 working, and of which the reformatory is a most essen 
 tially and badly needed part. Crime should be con 
 fined to the abnormal and the grossly abnormal should 
 be confined in prison. 
 
 Elmira Reformatory Nearly all public institutions 
 have their ups and downs. They have their ups when 
 they are put into the hands of some one great, over 
 mastering personality imbued with a righteous en 
 thusiasm for the work and unhampered by a petty, 
 partisan and place-hunting political influence. Elmira 
 had its period of glory when, under the superintendency 
 of Warden Brockway, it became the Mecca of penol- 
 ogists from all over the world; but the good, gray 
 warden waxed old, the job-chasers hungered for his 
 place and power, politics accomplished the overthrow 
 of his dynasty and Elmira took a header for the dead 
 level of a politically run prison. It arrived there with 
 a dull thud. 
 
 Public opinion in New York would not long stand 
 for such a thing. The politicians were thrown over 
 board and the prison management sent to Concord, 
 Massachusetts, for Warden Scott, of the Concord Re 
 formatory, because he had made a reputation there. 
 Elmira is now back where it was, doing an incompar- 
 
130 INSTITUTIONAL IJPE. 
 
 able work in redeeming to industrial and decent living 
 the human riff-raff of the streets of Greater New York. 
 
 The Material to Work On Ninety per cent of the 
 inmates of Elmira come from the streets of New York 
 and they bring with them records of felonies committed. 
 Petty offenders are not sent there, except for repeated 
 petty larcenies, which, by the law of New York, consti 
 tute felony. There were 1371 prisoners there on the 
 day of my visit, ranging between 16 and 30 years of 
 age. About 10 per cent of these are so deficient as to 
 make no progress in education or handicraft. These 
 become the commonest of common laborers, but are 
 often redeemed from lives of crime. They are reformed 
 without being transformed. Between 10 and 20 per 
 cent are self-control defectives. They are intelligent 
 enough, but have so little self-control that they fall 
 from grace upon the slightest provocation. They were 
 not properly trained in early childhood and it is ex 
 tremely difficult to train them in self-control in after 
 years, but it can be done to some extent. However, 
 they generally advance to one of the local peniten 
 tiaries, or to one of the state prisons two different 
 institutions in New York. The grimed-in dirt of sin 
 is often mistaken for hereditary tendency toward evil. 
 The most densely ignorant cases come from interior 
 New York. The denizens of the city slums may be 
 illiterate, as most of them are, but they are not igno 
 rant. The back-country bumpkin may be both ignorant 
 and illiterate, but in either case a half-year of indus 
 trial training drives the dull look of stupid bestiality 
 out of the faces of most of the prisoners and they look 
 like different persons. 
 
 The Story in Figures Always remembering that 
 sociological percentages are little more than general 
 izations or approximations to the exact truth, the fol 
 lowing -results of Elmira s reformatory work may be 
 summarized. Elmira takes men 50 or 60 per cent of 
 whom have had institutional records, only 6 per cent 
 
THE REFORMATORY. 131 
 
 are even partial tradesmen, 40 per cent can neither 
 read nor write and 30 per cent more can barely do so. 
 Seventy per cent of this mass is returned to society, 
 in something less than two years, on an average, to 
 behave so well that they do not afterwards figure in 
 criminal annals. 
 
 How it is Done At the foundation of all of the 1 
 reformatory work done at Elmira lies the indeter 
 minate sentence. It was the conduct of the prisoner 
 that brought him there and it must be his conduct that 
 will get him out, and the love of liberty is the primary 
 incentive to exertion in the upward climb. Every act 
 during the day or night either lengthens or shortens 
 the term of imprisonment and it is for the prisoner 
 himself to say which it shall be. He is given a square 
 deal. Every prisoner who thinks that he has been un 
 justly marked has the right of appeal to the warden, 
 and the appeal is sustained if the prisoner be in the 
 right. If an officer be at fault he must make the amende 
 honorable or get out of the institution. Officers and 
 prisoners alike know this and they proceed with care. 
 Without this system little could be accomplished. 
 
 Industrial Training Thirty-one trades are at least 
 partially taught at Elmira. No manufacturing is done. 
 The labor unions got that eliminated, so models are 
 made, graded and taken to pieces again. This is not, 
 in one sense, as good as making real things, but it is 
 better than a general manufacturing business, which 
 results in a man learning to do one thing and only one, 
 and seldom mastering a trade. All the prisoners are 
 unskilled when they come to Elmira, and they go out 
 as advanced apprentices, having about two-thirds fin 
 ished their trades. 
 
 The School Everybody in Elmira goes to school at 
 least some part of the day, and few go out who do not 
 at least know how to read and write, and many secure 
 what amounts to a common school education. A few 
 
132 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 do high school and college work, but as a rule educa 
 tion is regarded as the severest punishment inflicted, 
 and 75 per cent of the men will throw down their books 
 upon the instant and volunteer to dig ditch for the 
 laying of sewer pipe in preference to getting their 
 lessons, but effort in school counts for shortening the 
 term of sentence, so they take the bitter with the sweet 
 and make the effort. 
 
 The Credit System Upon entering the prison each 
 person is given a little bank book in which is entered 
 his debits and credits. Prisoners in the first grade are 
 allowed 55 cents a day for good work and are charged 
 42 cents a day for maintenance. The second grade 
 man may earn 45 cents and pay 32 cents per day for his 
 support. The prisoners are charged according to scale 
 for misdemeanors. Six perfect months will advance 
 one to the first grade, and thirty consecutive perfect 
 days will take one out of the third grade. At the end 
 of the time of service in the prison, when parole has 
 been earned, the prisoner is given the balance to his 
 credit in cash. Paroled men are given $10 anyway and 
 discharged men $15, and so much more as may remain 
 to their credit after deducting these sums. This is an 
 important incentive. 
 
 The Discipline The discipline is military, and the 
 silent system is exacted, at least during all working 
 hours. Misdemeanants reduced to the third grade are 
 clothed in red and are put at fatigue duty with no 
 privileges. When Mr. Scott took charge of the prison 
 there were 500 men in red. On the day of my visit 
 there were less than forty and the number has a 
 tendency to further decrease. Corporal punishment 
 is not used, but it should be borne in mind that the 
 greater part of the prisoners are much more mature 
 than is generally the case with reform school lads and 
 therefore are not influenced by quite the same con 
 siderations. 
 
 A book could be written, as many books have been 
 
THE REFORMATORY. l.T> 
 
 written, on Elmira Reformatory, but I must dismiss 
 the subject, however inadequately treated. 
 
 Concord Reformatory The only reformatory other 
 than at Elmira that I visited was the one at Concord, 
 Massachusetts. If I devote less space to it than to 
 Elmira it is because many phases of the subject are 
 common to both institutions and have been treated 
 under the Elmira subhead. For instance, only about 
 ten per cent of the admissions at Concord, as at Elmira, 
 are congenitally deficient, very few know how to do 
 anything that the world wants done and is willing to 
 pay for, nearly all left school in the third or fourth 
 grades or below, and nearly all owe their criminal 
 records to lax bringing up and lax school relations. 
 Concord gives these men another chance, and not only 
 gives it to them, but compels them to take it and make 
 the most of it. 
 
 Work and Instruction On one particular Concord 
 Reformatory differs radically from Elmira. Elmira 
 affords instruction only, but does not require commer 
 cial w r ork beyond providing for the wants of the prison. 
 At Concord half the working day is spent in some 
 form of manufacturing, the other half in some form 
 of industrial training, and the evening is devoted to 
 cultural school work for two hours. Nine trades are 
 prosecuted in the institution for the supplying of the 
 wants of the institution and of other state institutions. 
 There are 100 hand looms for weaving cloth required 
 in state institutions. This is regarded as productive 
 labor and not necessarily a part of the education of the 
 prisoner. 
 
 Industrial Education The industrial education of 
 men at Concord Reformatory begins with sloyd so far 
 as there is bench room for it. Those who can not be 
 placed here first are put in somewhere else, but the 
 mechanical superintendent would begin with sloyd in 
 every instance if possible. It is carried along through 
 
134 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 lathe work and wood carving and brightens up the 
 belated mechanic as nothing else can. With this be 
 ginning the student goes on with such trades as are 
 open to him until he is ready to go out, by which time 
 he has at least become an advanced apprentice. 
 
 The Discipline The disciplinary system is strict 
 without being harsh. No corporal punishment is in 
 flicted, but there is some solitary confinement with 
 hard labor. The sentence being indeterminate, the man 
 has his own salvation in his own hands, and love of 
 liberty, except in the cases of a few "chronics," is 
 sufficient to secure good behavior. There are the cus 
 tomary three grades of prisoners, all coming in in the 
 second grade. The first and second grade prisoners 
 mingle in their working hours, one being distinguished 
 from the other only by a chevron on the arm of the 
 first-graders. The second-grader may be advanced to 
 first grade by earning 1000 credits in seven consecutive 
 months, and he is helped to do this by being given a 
 bonus of 150 credits for four months of perfect record. 
 He may obtain five credits per day by general behavior, 
 diligence in study, industry in labor, quality of work, 
 quantity of work. A felon must remain six months in 
 first grade before being considered for parole, a mis 
 demeanant three months. It is possible for a man with 
 a five-year sentence to work his way out in one year, 
 and a two-year man may get out in nine months, but 
 the ordinary time for both classes runs between fifteen 
 and eighteen months. Seventy or seventy-five per cent 
 go out so far redeemed that they do not again figure 
 in criminal records. Another percentage comes back 
 for a second chance, and often this works a reformation 
 when the first term did not. 
 
 A Prison Farm Connected with the reformatory at 
 Concord, although at a distance from it, is a farm of 
 300 acres, to which the men eligible for parole are 
 transferred for two or three months before being set 
 at liberty. They would lose everything if they ran 
 
I HI SONS AND 1 HISONKUS. 135 
 
 away, and so remain to get up their strength by work 
 ing in the open air. 
 
 Drunkards Given a Chance Habitual drunkards are 
 not looked upon with favor in Massachusetts, and a 
 good many of them are sent to the Concord Reform 
 atory for a year-and-a-day. They can be so committed 
 up to 35 years of age, other culprits up to 40. They 
 are treated like other prisoners and frequently go out 
 to sin no more. Having been brought face to face 
 with their besetting sin they learn self-control. 
 
 Reformatory Influences The law says that the re 
 formatory influences relied upon at Concord shall be 
 "religion, ethical, literary, intellectual, manual and 
 physical instruction." As a matter of definite practice 
 and policy, however, these influences are put into about 
 this order: "habits of industry, knowledge of industry, 
 the personalities of the prison management, and after 
 wards, religion, education and ethical instruction." 
 There were 845 prisoners at Concord on the day of my 
 visit. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 PRISONS AND PRISONERS. 
 
 The general public has no very clearly defined ideas 
 on penology. It has roughly dealt out, in its own mind, 
 too often culminating in legislation, a rude sort of 
 adaptation of so much of imprisonment for so much of 
 offense against the laws and usages of society. The 
 courts have modified these apportionments, within ex 
 terior bounds, to suit their own notions of the degrees 
 of criminality requiring to be redressed at the bar of 
 justice. The result has been, in California, for instance, 
 as many kinds of justice as there have been judges of 
 criminal courts seated on the bench. Therefore, there 
 are men in our prisons serving sentences ranging any 
 where from two years to twentv for the commission of 
 
136 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 criminal acts of practically similar character under 
 practically similar circumstances. 
 
 .This condition not only defeats justice, but it gives 
 the prisoner a sense of having been either extremely 
 fortunate or unfortunate in the lottery of the judicial 
 dispensation of injustice. In the first instance, the 
 prisoner laughs in his sleeve and thanks his fortunate 
 stars ; in the second, he nurses his grievance against 
 society and awaits his opportunity to get even. In 
 neither case is it conducive to reformation of char 
 acter, which should be the chief end of the whole 
 machinery of criminal jurisprudence and prison dis 
 cipline. 
 
 The Indeterminate Sentence The indeterminate 
 sentence changes all this and puts the whole problem 
 on a basis of intelligence and justice combined. The 
 vindication of the law is provided for in the minimum 
 sentence. The reformation of the prisoner is mainly 
 put into his own hands that he may work out his own 
 salvation under the inspiration of the highest incentive 
 known to man the love of personal and physical 
 liberty. It acts as a tribunal for the equalization of 
 judicial sentences, which sadly need equalizing, and it 
 forms a basis of square dealing in the mind of the 
 prisoner on which to found reformatory work. 
 
 It is a good deal cheaper to reform a prisoner than 
 to keep him penned up, and a good deal better to turn 
 him out reformed than deformed. The indeterminate 
 sentence law must be made the beginning of better 
 things in California, for without it no permanently 
 good thing is likely to be accomplished for prisoners 
 or public. 
 
 As for punishing prisoners per se, Almighty God will 
 have all eternity in which to do that, and there is no 
 especial need for getting in a few licks upon our own 
 account during the life of the prisoner. The deterrent 
 effects of punishment have been commonly overesti 
 mated, but the minimum sentence established by law 
 
PRISONS AND PRISONERS. 137 
 
 will be quite sufficient for that purpose. The danger 
 is that it will be excessive rather than otherwise. 
 
 Classes of Criminals There are real criminals, and 
 then there are accidental or uncriminal criminals. 
 There are some human dregs who, by their constitution 
 and environment, will ever be at war with civilized 
 society. Such as these will have to be kept apart dur 
 ing their natural lives, but as recidivists they Avill be 
 winnowed out from the others and be given their 
 deserts. Relatively, these are few, probably not above 
 10 per cent of those who are found guilty of the com 
 mission of felonies. The rest are made up of fairly good 
 material gone w r rong. The greater part is capable of 
 redemption through industry and the square deal. 
 Some of it is not, for total depravity may be achieved 
 if not obtained as a birthright. Those who have 
 achieved it will add themselves to the congenitally 
 deficient and will make up a moiety of our permanent 
 prison population. 
 
 It is said that the angels of darkness fell from the 
 parapets of heaven to the depths of hell at a single 
 plunge. There are fairly good persons who commit 
 criminal acts of this character. Society probably w r ill 
 not, and perhaps can not, bring itself to deal liberally 
 with such as these. They become life-termers as a 
 warning to others of their class who probably do not 
 receive the warning in time to heed it. In eastern 
 prisons a life sentence generally means sentence for 
 life. Such as these become objects of sympathy and 
 therefore do not lose hope, but as sympathy does not 
 take the form of releasing them they hope on till 
 death or insanity and death. 
 
 Prison System vs. Personality The modern exem 
 plary prison has three grades of prisoners. Those who 
 come in enter the second grade and are usually clad 
 in cadet gray. They work themselves up to army blue 
 or down to stripes or turkey red, according to conduct. 
 There is a finely discriminating system of rewards and 
 
138 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 of deprivations of privileges under which the prisoner 
 lives and moves and has his being. He must watch his 
 p s and q s ceaselessly or get caught napping. Many 
 do, and the adjusting of penalties to breaches of the 
 rules occupies about half the time of the prison manage 
 ment. That it teaches self-control can not be ques 
 tioned, nor can it be questioned that self-control is 
 the surpassing need of the man in stripes. The want 
 of it has put him in stripes, and if its acquisition can 
 take him out well and good; but, after all, there is 
 much question if it can reach the heart of the man, 
 or if a man can be reformed without having the heart 
 of him reached. 
 
 That indescribable something we call personality is 
 the only redemptive force I know of in the world. 
 Theology can be taught, but religion can not. Religion 
 must emanate from the personality. I have seen 
 prisons conducted well under an enlightened prison 
 system, and I have seen them equally well conducted 
 under no system at all, but with the right men to do the 
 work. Prisoners are, after all, men. Many prison offi 
 cials forget this and come to look upon their charges 
 as mere raw material upon which to practice prison 
 discipline that there may be such a thing as prison 
 discipline in the world. When a warden forgets that 
 his prisoners are men, he should give place to another 
 who can remember it. Discipline is useful to a prison, 
 not a prison to discipline. 
 
 The writer has neither gone far enough, seen enough 
 nor read enough to undertake to solve the problem of 
 penology. The things stated above seem to him to be 
 true, and he believes that they are true, but the case 
 is not closed even for him. It is, however, for the 
 people of California to do something sensible about 
 prisons and prisoners, and in default of better stuff 
 the foregoing will do to ruminate over. 
 
PRISON LABOR. 139 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 PRISON LABOR. 
 
 It is not so much what organized labor really objects 
 to that makes the employment of prison labor difficult, 
 as it is what the timid politician fears that organized 
 labor may object to. The need of the time is to have 
 men of affairs first inform themselves as to what con 
 stitutes a sound policy regarding prison labor, and then 
 hold heart-to-heart talks with organized labor over the 
 results of their investigations. Reasonable men can 
 always be won over to a reasonable view in a reason 
 able time, and the men who have had the power to 
 organize labor as efficiently as it has been organized 
 may safely be classed as reasonable men. 
 
 Competition of Prison Labor with Free Labor Every 
 
 stroke of work done by a prisoner competes more or 
 less with free labor. If the prisoners were set at liberty 
 and went to work outside of prison every one of them 
 w r ould compete with free labor, and they can not do 
 less inside if they work at all. In fact, what society 
 wants of them is that they shall compete. They have 
 been shut up in prison mainly because they were not 
 competing with free labor, but were feloniously trying 
 to live without competing. Every able-bodied person 
 who lives without competing with some form of free 
 labor is either a drone or a felon, and is usually both, 
 and needs to be forced into competition with free 
 labor until he becomes willing to compete without com 
 pulsion. 
 
 But free labor demands that this competition shall 
 be on fair terms. That is a rightful demand, perfectly 
 reasonable and perfectly feasible. Prison labor should 
 be employed for all it is worth, but on terms essentially 
 fair to labor that is free. It can be so employed and 
 never should be employed in any other way. 
 
140 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 The Contract System Popular opposition to the 
 employment of prison labor has grown out of the sys 
 tem of contracting prison labor to greedy corporations 
 upon terms that were at once unfair to the prisoners, 
 to free labor and to the purchasing public. All the 
 labor of the Connecticut state prison at Wethersfield 
 has been under contract for many years. A large part 
 of it has been contracted to a firm of shoe manufac 
 turers for thirty years at fifty cents per day, per man, 
 the state to board the prisoners and to get a full ten 
 hours work out of them each week day at the peril 
 of a splendid system of rewards and penalties rein 
 forced by the indeterminate sentence and the silent 
 system of prison discipline. 
 
 I expected the paid bosses of this sort of labor to 
 decry it, but they did not. On the contrary, they 
 asserted that it compared very favorably with labor 
 outside of prison. I have no manner of doubt that the 
 contractors for this labor could afford to pay a dollar 
 a day for the labor and board it instead of getting it 
 for fifty cents a day and having it boarded. Free labor 
 has a right to protest against such competition as that, 
 and I shall hope to see it so protest that it will be 
 brought to an end in Connecticut as well as elsewhere. 
 It is not a fair competition with free labor. 
 
 Frightened More than Hurt But even in the case of 
 the Connecticut prison contract labor the shoe and the 
 shirt industries are more frightened than hurt. The 
 contract is a "good thing" for the contractors, but not 
 particularly a bad thing for the shoe and shirt trade, 
 because of so little importance relatively to the whole 
 volume of manufacture of these products. One factory 
 more or less has hardly any effect upon the general 
 price level, and the general price level only is of im 
 portance to the producer and consumer. 
 
 If the labor of all the prisoners in the United States 
 were properly distributed throughout the general 
 manufacturing lines their product would scarcely affect 
 the general price level either of wages or of com modi- 
 
PRISON LABOR. 141 
 
 ties. As well might the people on the low lands object 
 to turning the water from a waste-way of an irrigation 
 ditch into the river through fear of injuriously raising 
 the water-plane of San Francisco bay. Nevertheless, 
 the principle of contracting prison labor to corporations 
 is a wrong one, and a wide diversification of prison 
 labor is unlikely. Therefore, the whole contract sys 
 tem should be abolished. It is unjust to free labor, 
 unnecessary to the profitable employment of prisoners 
 and not in accordance with sound business policy. 
 
 At Wholesale Prices Each state should employ its 
 own labor for its own purposes and, if it have any 
 surplus, put it upon the market at current wholesale 
 prices. If it can not do business on that basis then let 
 it quit trying to do business. It is not true to say of 
 prison labor that it costs the state nothing. It costs 
 a very great deal to house it, board it, govern it, and 
 get the work out of it. It will not undersell a free 
 market if compelled to reimburse itself for_ its outlay 
 and yet meet wholesale prices in the open market. 
 That sort of competition would be fair to free labor, 
 and fair play is all that free labor has a right to claim, 
 or is likely to claim when the issue is put to it frankly 
 and fairly. 
 
 Furthermore, each commonwealth has many wants 
 of its own and has a natural right to supply those wants 
 with its own labor if it can. If its industries be so 
 diversified as to cover all the wants of public institu 
 tional life it will hustle the prisons to supply the 
 demands. The laws give Massachusetts prisons the 
 right to sell surplus products on the open market at 
 current wholesale prices, but the sales are very small 
 and inconsequential. New York manufactures to sup 
 ply its own institutional needs and, although power 
 machinery is used, the prison labor can not be made 
 to supply the institutional demand. 
 
 Up-to-Date Machinery In Massachusetts demagogy 
 has compelled the use of hand machinery in the main 
 
142 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 to the handicapping of industrial effort. Production 
 is further handicapped by limiting the number of men 
 to be employed at different trades, and, finally, the 
 law requiring production on state account is enforced 
 in a way that obeys the law s letter without throwing 
 much spirit into it. Only about seven hours work is 
 gotten out of the prisoners per day in the longest days 
 of the year, and only about five hours during the shorter 
 days of the winter months. At Auburn prison, New 
 York, better results are obtained, better machinery 
 used and better work done, but not to the injury of 
 free labor, because the general market is not undersold 
 and the price level sought to be reduced. What labor 
 wants for itself it should be willing to grant to the 
 state, viz., a fair competition instead of an unfair one. 
 
 The Illinois Scheme Illinois undertook to knock out 
 the school-desk trust by fixing the prices at which 
 school desks should be sold at $1 less than the trust 
 price. The trust came down to the state rate and went 
 on selling its desks while the prison-made desks are 
 being piled up in warehouses. New York had its 
 prison-made prices fixed by a commission, with regard 
 to a reasonable wholesale price, with the result that 
 Greater New York takes all the school desks Auburn 
 prison can make. Illinois has 700 idle men rotting in 
 their cells at Joliet because it neither required state 
 institutions to buy of the prisons nor the prisons to sell 
 at current wholesale prices in the open market. 
 
 It has been suggested in the interests of labor, that 
 the improved machinery used be thrown out and all 
 work be done by hand. That might be allowable 
 rather than to permit an army of men to lie in their 
 cells idle from month to month and year to year, but 
 it is economically as sensible as to require the men to 
 have one hand strapped to their sides that they might 
 work only with the other. In the prison at Charlestown, 
 Mass., I saw seventy men weaving prison cloth with 
 hand looms when two men with power looms would 
 
PRISON LABOR. 143 
 
 h;m> done the same work, and turned out a better 
 article. 
 
 Apprentice Labor Mainly Always remembering that 
 a main purpose of a prison is to send its men back into 
 life able to compete with free labor on terms of equality, 
 and so earn an honest living, it will readily be seen 
 that a large part of the labor it can employ must be 
 apprentice labor and so quite unable to compete on 
 equal terms with skilled labor. By the time a good 
 prisoner, especially in a reformatory, can become an 
 advanced apprentice in a useful trade, he will have 
 regained his freedom. Only the long-termers and life- 
 termers can be counted on for journeyman work, and 
 they are relatively few. Handicapped in these several 
 ways private enterprise and free labor have nothing 
 to fear from competition with prison labor under state 
 management. The ability of the state to compete with 
 free labor and private enterprise is much more ques 
 tionable than that of free labor and capital being able 
 to withstand state competition. 
 
 Something for the Prisoner, Too Remembering that 
 the prisoner is a man, and perhaps not only has a 
 future to plan for when he shall go outside, but very 
 likely has relatives suffering for the aid of what his 
 labor can produce, it is worth while to give some further 
 thought to him. This is done, for instance, at the East 
 ern penitentiary at Philadelphia, where there are many 
 hundreds of men working, exclusively by hand, on 
 many articles of manufacture for the open market. 
 The men are given a reasonable stint of work to do for 
 the state, after which they may produce on their own 
 account at a moderate stipend. It is astonishing what 
 an incentive a very small earning power gives. Those 
 men will roll out of their bunks and work from daylight 
 until dark in order to earn, beyond their state stint, 
 fifteen or twenty cents a day. They have learned the 
 working habit before they know it, and many a wife 
 
144 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 and child outside is being helped over hard places by 
 the earnings of some man who has, by violating the 
 laws of his country, very likely while drunk, become 
 a prisoner for a term of years. 
 
 What California Should Do California has a large 
 institutional population which needs to be supplied 
 with many things, very few of which are now being 
 supplied by prison or other institutional labor. Our 
 prisoners are not learning trades that they can follow 
 when they go outside. In my judgment San Quentin 
 should be made a reformatory and trade school, work 
 ing only upon lines that can be followed when the 
 prisoner shall have worked his way out. Folsom should 
 be made a walled prison and manufactory equipped 
 with up-to-date machinery for the production of such 
 commodities as the state institutions require. This will 
 give a wide range of production, few men will be 
 employed in each line, and, if some excess of production 
 over the requirements for the institutions shall chance 
 to be turned out, its sale on the open market, at current 
 wholesale prices, will not cause a ripple on the placid 
 bosom of price level. There will not be enough of 
 product to do that. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 FOR THE HEALING OF HURT MINDS. 
 
 Insanity is in this country, and all other civilized 
 countries, on the increase out of proportion to the in 
 crease of population. To become insane is, from the 
 standpoint of the sane, the sum of human misfortunes. 
 From the standpoint of the insane themselves it does 
 not look so bad. They generally want to go home, but 
 aside from this their every reasonable want is satisfied 
 and, with few exceptions, with kindness. 
 
 It has seemed to me that the insane are, everywhere 
 I have been, given good physical care. This is espe 
 cially true in California. Our climate is on the side of 
 
FOR THE HEALING OP HURT MINDS. 145 
 
 physical comfort and a certain largeness of liberty not 
 allowable elsewhere, but, with all deference to the 
 experts in care of our insane, it has seemed to my lay 
 and untutored mind that not enough hurt minds were 
 being cured of their maladies. Therefore I sought, as 
 best I could, while on my eastern pilgrimage, to find 
 where, if anywhere, more was being done than in Cali 
 fornia for the healing of minds that are hurt. 
 
 Causes of Increase in Insanity If the phenomenon 
 of increase of insanity be as broad as civilization so 
 must be the causes for the increase of that phenomenon. 
 Therefore, it is well to look for a universal cause for the 
 increase of insanity. The press of the country has 
 hastily jumped to the conclusion that this increase is 
 because of our modern stress and strenuosity of life. 
 Perhaps so. That is no doubt a contributing cause, 
 but it is seldom that the finger can be put upon any one 
 cause adequate for a full explanation. Almost every 
 effect has many contributing causes. 
 
 The stress of our time may be set down as one con 
 tributing cause. Increase of the number of foci of 
 hereditary predisposition is another. The more that 
 people go insane the more are there from whom to 
 inherit that hereditary taint, and as half the insanity 
 there is is roughly written off to hereditary tendency, 
 this increase of tainted family stocks must be regarded 
 as a further contributing cause toward a general in 
 crease of insanity. 
 
 The tremendous migrations of peoples which the last 
 century has witnessed, bringing them to scenes and 
 conditions both new and strange, must be taken as 
 another contributing cause, at least so far as America 
 is concerned. A considerable percentage of insanity 
 in our country, quite out of proportion to their relative 
 numbers, is furnished by foreign-born persons. They 
 go insane here when they might not have done so at 
 home. 
 
146 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 May we not account for some of this increase, too, 
 by reason of the falling off of our former standards of 
 morality? Much insanity is due to plain,, old-fashioned 
 sin, sinful excesses in all relations of life. In former 
 days people lived more prudently and went astray 
 mentally and morally less frequently. But whatever 
 the cause the fact is hardly a matter of dispute. In 
 sanity is proportionately and absolutely on the increase-. 
 
 Kinds of Insanity Dr. Tobey, superintendent of the 
 hospital for the insane at Toledo, Ohio, universally 
 recognized as one of the strongest men in that work, 
 told me that it would be much easier to classify all 
 persons out of insane hospitals into different kinds 
 than those inside, because there would be fewer classes 
 of them. The medical books are full of classifications, 
 but one class shades into another so that lines drawn 
 between them are more arbitrary than scientific. How 
 ever, we have the acute and the chronic classifications 
 that any layman can grasp, and this will serve for the 
 purposes of this chapter. The acute are those who have 
 but recently become mentally ill. The chronic are 
 those for whom there is no reasonable hope of recovery, 
 and yet once in a while one does recover. . In the course 
 of twenty years experience in the asylum for chronic 
 insane at Worcester, Mass., with an average of 550 
 patients, Dr. Scribner has known of perhaps twenty 
 persons, one a year, recovering their reasons absolutely, 
 and yet, so far as science could determine, they had 
 become hopelessly and chronically insane. 
 
 Hope for the Acute Whatever there may be of sub 
 stantial hope is for the acute cases. I found eastern 
 sentiment very strong on this point and the medical 
 fraternity enthusiastic for making their supreme effort 
 right at the start. What seemed to me to be the best 
 work done by any public hospital was at Ward s Island, 
 New York. Here the receiving ward is the finest in 
 the institution. In California the finest ward is the 
 convalescent. It is not that the convalescent w r ard 
 
FOR THE HEALING OF HURT MINDS. 147 
 
 should be less comfortable and homelike, but that the 
 acute ward should be more so. At Ward s Island this 
 ward is supplied with pianos and other musical instru 
 ments, with fine pictures on the walls, oaken floors and 
 thick, velvety rugs, potted plants sitting all around 
 giving the room almost the appearance of being a con 
 servatory. 
 
 The acute patient is here given a bath with massage, 
 the condition of his digestion is looked after, the most 
 tempting foods are set before him, he is treated with 
 great kindness and soothed as much as possible, and, 
 instead of being in a prison, as he had imagined, he is in 
 a parlor or elegant home with pretty female attendants 
 as well as male to attend to all of his wants. If he still 
 continues greatly disturbed he may be put to soak, 
 given turkish or other baths, in the hope of increasing 
 the circulation, reducing the temperature and putting 
 his whole physical being in a normal and healthful 
 condition. Forty per cent of the recoveries are made 
 right here and in a very short period of time. 
 
 Practically the same methods are employed at Hart 
 ford Retreat and at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, 
 both private institutions, except that the patients are 
 given private rooms and personal attendants instead 
 of being treated on wards. Hydrotherapeutic (which 
 means water cure) appliances are very generally em 
 ployed and with good results. Only one of California s 
 hospitals is yet equipped with these appliances and 
 that one with only a portion of the whole system. I 
 think that the most pressing need in California is for 
 its hospitals to get up fully abreast of Ward s Island 
 in treating acute cases. 
 
 Cases of Delirium There are many who are not in 
 sane, but only delirious, who are dragged off to an 
 insane asylum and who should never be taken there. 
 The ordinary medical practitioner knows little more 
 of insanity than a common-sense layman. Great wrong 
 is often done patients by reason of this lack of special 
 
148 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 knowledge, which eastern medical colleges are now 
 trying to supply. General hospitals, too, are preparing 
 wards for the treatment of cases which may be nothing 
 more than delirium or other forms of illness attended 
 with mental symptoms. AVhen the general practitioner 
 rises to the emergency the receiving wards of our state 
 hospitals will be less thronged than they now are and 
 better care can be given acute cases. In the institutions 
 above mentioned each patient received is given the 
 benefit of the individual study of the entire medical 
 staff, and there comes near being one attendant to 
 each patient. 
 
 Labor of Patients At Ward s Island, when one 
 has gotten out of the acute ward and started on the 
 road toward recovery, he is taken to the convalescent 
 ward to rest up and come to himself still more, and 
 from there to the shops or the garden to go to work. 
 It is found that nature has no balm for hurt minds 
 better than honest industry. We all of us know that 
 when we are troubled in spirit the best thing we can 
 do is to duff in and work good and hard at something 
 that occupies our mind, but in a different direction 
 from that concerning which we are troubled. It is 
 equally so with the insane, and to set them to learning 
 a new trade, or working diligently with their hands, 
 or in the open air with pick and shovel, hoe and rake, 
 is to set them on the road toward regaining their proper 
 senses if they are to be regained, which isn t always 
 by any means. 
 
 Private institutions, such as Hartford Retreat and 
 McLean Hospital, are mainly denied the opportunity 
 for working their patients, who generally come from 
 the genteel walks of life where manual labor would 
 be looked upon as a hardship. The penalty for taking 
 this point of view is terrible to contemplate. It is 
 chronic insanity with no reasonable hope of emancipa 
 tion from it. 
 
FOR THE HEALING OP HURT MINDS. 14<) 
 
 Results of the Healing Art Dr. Potter, of Rochester 
 hospital, lumped the healing art off to me as follows: 
 As a matter of experience, after science and nursing 
 have done their best, about twenty-five per cent of those 
 who were really insane, and not merely suffering from 
 delirium, will become perfectly cured, twenty-five per 
 cent more will return home well enough to remain there 
 under surveillance, twenty-five per cent will speedily die 
 of their malady, and the remaining twenty -five per cent 
 will sink into a state of chronic dementia that will last the 
 ordinary expectation of institutional life, which is be 
 tween twelve and fifteen years. 
 
 The Licentious Life There is a form of insanity to 
 which men are chiefly subject that should constitute 
 a sounder lesson in morals than it does. In nearly all 
 institutions for the insane are found men who were 
 once men of affairs, leaders in their communities, pro 
 fessional men, civil engineers, officers in the army, big, 
 hearty, manly men, who have come to a condition 
 where, if seated on a bench, they will stay there a week 
 if not moved elsewhere. They have no concern for 
 the natural operations of the digestive or urinary 
 mechanisms of their bodies, and do not betray half as 
 much interest in the things which appertain to life as 
 the dullest hog that lies grunting in its sty. Majesty 
 in ruins! The result of the licentious life. 
 
 Self -Control There are many persons who have 
 their sanity or insanity within their own keeping. If 
 they give way to every whim and inconsequential 
 emotion, if they control neither their appetites, their 
 passions nor their tempers, as old age creeps on to them 
 it will find them with eccentricities ripened into an 
 insanity that will send them to an institution to spend 
 their declining years. Most of the so-called senile 
 insanity is of this quality and might have been pre 
 vented had the patients sought in early life and middle 
 age to make their lives sweet instead of bitter by 
 striving to make the lives of others around them sweet 
 instead of bitter. 
 
150 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 The Colony System Unless a hospital finds some 
 means for disposing of its chronic cases it will inevi 
 tably become filled with old chronics for whom there is 
 no hope. I visited Kirkbride hospital in Philadelphia 
 where, with a population of several hundred patients, 
 there were not fifty possibly curable cases. Massachu 
 setts has wearied of building great, central asylums 
 and is now carrying the farm colony idea into the 
 department of insanity. Massachusetts farms are being 
 bought up, moderate-priced buildings erected, and in 
 sane persons are being placed there in families of thirty 
 or fifty under the care of trained attendants and farm 
 ers who will get as much work out of them as possible 
 and make the cost of their maintenance as low as pos 
 sible. Instead of costing $700 or $800 each for housing, 
 it is probable that the housing can be done for $200 
 to $250 per patient. There will be a great saving to 
 the commonwealth and, so far as the experiment has 
 been tried, the patients have been more free, more 
 quiet, contented, and better off physically than in the 
 costly hospitals and asylums. 
 
 A Suggestion for California In my humble judg 
 ment California should begin to establish some nice 
 little colonies for her insane instead of building any 
 more asylums or greatly enlarging those we have. A 
 reasonable sized tract of land cut up into twenty-acre 
 farms, and made the homes of perhaps forty or fifty 
 patients each, at a cost of $10,000 or $12,000 for build 
 ings, would result in great economy to the common 
 wealth and great good to certain classes of patients 
 able to be out of doors and to work with chickens, 
 cows and hogs or in raising fruits, berries and vege 
 tables. These colonies should not be away off some 
 where, but within easy driving distance from the 
 present parent institutions and under the same man 
 agement. There are, I believe, great possibilities for 
 economy and humanity in the Massachusetts colony 
 idea as adapted to California climate and conditions. 
 
TO SOCIAL SERVICE WORKERS. 151 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 TO SOCIAL SERVICE WORKERS. 
 
 It may not be true, and probably is not, that the 
 nearer every function of government can be brought 
 to the people themselves the better will that function 
 be performed. The representative principle has found 
 a firm place in our political economy, and for the best 
 of reasons, but there can be no question that repre 
 sentative government will not get on well without 
 being sustained, and kept in right channels, by an active 
 and enlightened public sentiment. Neither will it get 
 on well without the cooperation of a large and disinter 
 ested body of altruistic social workers permeating and 
 agitating the social mass in order that it may not stag 
 nate and lose its evolutionary impulse. The great, 
 human mass we call society must go either forward or 
 backward. It can not rest on its arms in security. 
 That it shall be kept moving, that it shall be kept alive 
 and watchful of its interests, is the task which nature 
 has committed to the charge of the comparatively few 
 who are capable of seeing beyond their own immediate 
 horizons and capable of untiring and disinterested 
 effort for the common weal. It is to those unselfish 
 workers in social service whose constant effort it is to 
 make all things better than they are, that this chapter 
 is particularly addressed. 
 
 The Highway to Criminality Of the tens of thou 
 sands who fill the jails and prisons of this country it 
 is within the limit of probability to say that eighty-five 
 per cent are there, not through any prenatal tendencies 
 to evil, but because they have never learned to do 
 anything that the world wants to have done and is 
 willing to pay for, and have sought to make their living 
 by doing things that the world does not want to have 
 done and is unwilling to pay for, though it generally 
 has to roundly. Those who have failed in the under- 
 
152 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 taking land in jail. Those who succeed are the uncon- 
 victed felons whose names sooner or later become 
 anathema in the public mouth. 
 
 In nine cases out of every ten the first step taken on 
 this highway is taken by the truant. He loses interest 
 in the purely academic studies, gets behind, becomes 
 ashamed to be in classes with smaller boys, fancies that 
 he must go to work, strikes a job and loses it because 
 he does not know how to do anything useful, falls into 
 loafing about livery barns, railroad stations and where- 
 ever loafers congregate, gets his mind poisoned by this 
 contact, wants things he can not buy, "swipes" things 
 that will sell, goes on progressively from "swiping" 
 to till-tapping, from till-tapping to looting vacant 
 buildings in search of lead pipe and other portable 
 properties, climbs into kitchen windows and loots 
 houses when the families are away, burglarizes stores, 
 gets frightened and "takes to the road" for awhile, 
 learns all the degrading habits going among hoboes, 
 and, pushed for money and unfit for work, he turns 
 footpad and, at seventeen or eighteen years, is haled 
 before a court for murder, or highway robbery. Or, 
 perhaps, he is arrested only for burglary, porch-climb 
 ing, or breaking-and-entering. Ten thousand just such 
 stories as this have been told in the courts and prisons 
 of our country, with only such variations as a step 
 father or stepmother might afford. The initial point 
 of weakness in a good boy gone wrong was loss of 
 interest in school life because it no longer appealed to 
 the surging impulses that were rising within the lad 
 just entering upon the voice-changing period. 
 
 Appalling Figures The most significant statement 
 of fact made at the State Teachers Association during 
 its recent session at Berkeley was that made by Gov 
 ernor George C. Pardee that of 85,000 boys who started 
 to school for their first day in the fall of 1897 only 
 4500 remained in school long enough to graduate from 
 the grammar grade. It signifies nothing that other 
 
TO .SOCIAL SERVICE WORKERS. 153 
 
 states have similar records. The more such records 
 the more appalling the fact. What fitness has any 
 present-day American boy for performing the duties 
 of life if he have not so much as a grammar school 
 education? The above figures need to be reversed. 
 As many as 80,500 should have graduated from the 
 grammar grade last June and no more than 4500 
 should have failed. Scarcely one boy in a hundred goes 
 from a school where he has been a regular attendant 
 to a reform school. 
 
 Children Must be Kept in School In very self-de 
 fense children must be kept in school, at least until 
 they have completed the grammar course. There will 
 be no diminution of criminality until this is accom 
 plished. This is to be accomplished in two ways : 
 First, by having a compulsory education law that means 
 it, and, second, by putting things into the school courses 
 that respond to the demands of adolescent boy and 
 girl nature. A compulsory education law that means 
 it is one that provides adequate machinery for enforc 
 ing it, as the California law does not. There are those 
 who may act in the matter, but none who must act. 
 
 Education is a state and not a local problem, and the 
 state educational department should have the power 
 and machinery for enforcing attendance. Connecticut 
 has such a law, and its enforcement is almost complete. 
 The state is divided into educational inspection dis 
 tricts with inspectors permanently in the field. This 
 inspector visits each school district at least once a 
 year without previous announcement. He takes with 
 him a certified copy of the last school census roll 
 and checks off all children who answer the roll call. 
 Those not there must be accounted for satisfactorily 
 by the district officers or that district does not draw 
 any state school money on the absent children. If 
 parents are at fault they are proceeded against. It is 
 recognized as fundamental that Almighty God did not 
 endow children under fourteen with wisdom sufficient 
 
154 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. - 
 
 for the proper ordering of their own steps. Therefore, 
 parental duty is enforced if it can be and, if it can 
 not be enforced, then Connecticut assumes ultimate 
 guardianship for the child of school age and sends it 
 to a state school. California could easily provide a 
 similar system. There is small justification for paying 
 out state money for the education of children who do 
 not go to school. 
 
 Manual and Agricultural Training There may be 
 som-e measure of truth in the assertion that a child may 
 be by law compelled to go to school but can not be 
 compelled to learn anything while in school. Any 
 child not insane or imbecile can be induced to learn 
 through an arousing of the natural instincts of child 
 hood common to the age of the child. Manual training, 
 school gardens and nature study, wherever intelligently 
 attempted, have been found to appeal to the natural 
 demands of adolescent childhood. It is almost uni 
 versally true that one lesson in manual training of one 
 hour and a half or two hours per week will suffice to 
 hold any boy in school, and a similar lesson in sewing 
 or cooking will hold a girl to her cultural studies. If 
 not one lesson, then two lessons. Adolescence demands 
 action, not meditation. Thinking close, accurate 
 thinking is the hardest work that men or women are 
 called upon to do. It will make the sweat starl quicker 
 than anything else, yet our school system expects that 
 adolescent youth, with all of its restlessness, will "do 
 that kind of work six hours a day. Not one adult in a 
 hundred does it one hour a day, and many do not think 
 hard one hour in six days. It does not so much matter 
 what is taught as that something is, and that the boy 
 and girl are held in school until they develop some 
 glimmerings of common sense. If those who drop out 
 are largely children of foreign-born parents, eager for 
 their scanty earnings, all the greater is the need for 
 keeping them in school. The school is the great Ameri 
 can assimilator of incongruous peoples. It is where 
 
TO SOCIAL SERVICE WORKERS. 155 
 
 the child of another country is Americanized if at all, 
 and if not Americanized at all he becomes an enemy 
 to American ideas and institutions. What an oppor 
 tunity is here afforded for social service workers ! 
 
 The Jails It is the deliberate opinion of men who 
 are brought in touch with criminal life throughout the 
 east, so far as I was able to meet them, that the county 
 jails create more crime than all the reformatories and 
 prisons can correct. Huddled together as the inmates 
 of these jails are there goes on a malevolent assimilation 
 that turns all the inmates out schooled in bestiality 
 and low cunning if not actual devotees of crime. The 
 r.eed seems to be to assemble the prisoners in district in 
 stead of county jails so that there will be enough of 
 prisoners to permit their being segregated into classes 
 and set to profitable work. 
 
 New York has three classes of such institutions 
 county jails, penitentiaries and state prisons. The 
 penitentiaries are generally furnished by certain coun 
 ties and they receive prisoners, misdemeanants mainly, 
 from other counties in that district at a stipend fixed 
 by law. These prisoners were formerly contracted to 
 work in productive industry, but are now doing work 
 under the same laws as regulate labor in state prisons, 
 and the expectation is that the state will finally assume 
 control of all jails and penitentiaries, using the jails 
 only for retaining prisoners to answer for trial, the 
 penitentiaries for misdemeanants, the prisons for felons. 
 If California had such a system, with half a dozen 
 penitentiaries, a reformatory and a prison, some bene 
 ficial use could be made of hobo labor. What individual 
 counties can not afford to undertake a group of counties 
 in a district may be able to do with profit. Another 
 theme for social service workers to ruminate upon ! 
 
 Education in Restraint of Matrimony There is a 
 deal of inconsequential talk of the a-sexualization of 
 the unfit, a thing that will never come to pass to any 
 appreciable extent; but moral suasion, backed by an 
 
156 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 educated public sentiment, can do much toward re 
 straining matrimonial alliances where attainder of in 
 sanity or other ailment unmistakably runs with the 
 blood. I think that it was Dr. Graham Bell who was 
 responsible for the s^tement that fully half of all the 
 deaf mutes born in this ^country were descendants of 
 four unfortunate families two from the Cape Cod 
 district, and one each from New Jersey and Maryland. 
 In some of the institutions for the blind and the deaf a 
 quiet but effective influence is brought to bear upon 
 the students to dissuade them from matrimony through 
 fear of evil consequences to their progeny. Epileptics 
 are similarly worked upon with good results, and, 
 throughout the country, there are hundreds who remain 
 single because of the presence in the family history of 
 the taint of insanity. Public sentiment can help here, 
 too. 
 
 The Power of Suggestion Hypnotism is nothing 
 more nor less than a manifestation of the influence 
 upon the mind of the power of repeated suggestion. 
 It is perfectly clear to sociologists that the increase of 
 criminality, the world over, and especially in this 
 country, is largely due to the power of suggestion of 
 the yellow press. Sensational papers are mainly taken 
 by persons most likely to be influenced by the power 
 of suggestion, and the reading of graphic reports of 
 murders, suicides, robberies, domestic scandals, etc., 
 day after day, year after year, can not fail of producing 
 untoward results in minds of that character. It has 
 been observed that atrocities of every kind, blazoned 
 in the columns of such papers, are imitated shortly 
 after, incident by incident. Time was when the dime 
 novel was charged with many heinous offenses against 
 social well-being, but how much greater the evil now 
 that daily novels of as worthless character are hawked 
 about streets at one cent per copy ! The yellow papers 
 not only use a deal of fiction in their daily grist, but 
 they tell whatever truth they do tell in the language 
 
TO SOCIAL SERVICE WORKERS. 157 
 
 of fiction so that it tastes like fiction in the mouths of 
 their readers and has the same influence upon their 
 overwrought nervous systems. Here is another point 
 for social service workers to make their influence count 
 in making things better than they are. 
 
 The Bane of Political Patronage There can be no 
 free government without politics and there can be no 
 politics without official patronage, but there can be 
 free government without dirty politics and there can 
 be political patronage without its prostitution to 
 ignoble and personal ends. It is right and profitable 
 in government to first fix responsibility for efficient 
 government and then give political power commen 
 surate with that responsibility, but the prostitution of 
 this power to mere personal ends should bring upon 
 the heads of officers guilty of it the contempt of all 
 right-thinking persons, and in no other way can that 
 abuse be prevented. 
 
 The institutional life of California has, throughout the 
 greater part of the history of the state, been blighted 
 by this bane of low politics. Our reform schools have 
 been crippled again and again, our prisons have ex 
 perienced its damning influence, and our state hospitals 
 for the insane and Home for the Feeble-Minded have 
 not been wholly and at all times beyond the reach of 
 the same paralyzing influence. 
 
 Throughout the east this source of disaster to the 
 institutional life of the commonwealth has been reduced 
 to a minimum, if not obliterated altogether. There is 
 still plenty of partisan politics to the square inch, but 
 public sentiment has said to it: "Hands off the public 
 institutions, or out you go," and no politician dares 
 lay hand on an institution for his own personal, politi 
 cal advantage. I saw many men in positions of great 
 responsibility who had been there from twenty to thirty 
 years. Political parties had come into power and gone 
 out of it, but these worthy masters of their institutional 
 duties remained undisturbed through all the vicissi 
 tudes of partisan history. 
 
158 INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. 
 
 Without continuity in institutional office on the part 
 of those who have once proven their fitness there can 
 be no good thing permanently accomplished. Politics 
 in the institutional life of a state is as bad as politics 
 in the public schools, than which nothing can be worse. 
 It is for social service workers in this commonwealth 
 to so educate public opinion and the public conscience 
 that no politician will dare to lay selfish hands upon 
 any state institution, or for any reason other than for 
 the absolute and unqualified good of such institution. 
 Our public conscience in this particular is lax. It 
 should be strengthened. 
 
 The State Board of Charities and Corrections I can 
 
 not more fittingly close this pamphlet than by making 
 a short and very direct appeal for public support for 
 California s State Board of Charities and Corrections. 
 It has not quite found its place yet in the public mind 
 and in state policy. This is partially its own fault 
 because of its unwarranted timidity in making its 
 work known to the public, and partially the fault of 
 professional politicians who regard charity workers as 
 bothersome meddlers. 
 
 Wherever I went among eastern states I found the 
 State Board of Charities and Corrections doing a valued 
 work and holding a high place in the estimation of 
 public men and officials. They are outside of the main 
 currents of political action and, in a measure, stand 
 between the public and official conduct. They report 
 to the public what is being done and what needs to be 
 done. They gather the best obtainable information 
 touching public affairs and give it a publicity that is 
 nothing short of illuminating. They champion the 
 cause of delinquent and dependent childhood. They 
 influence the conduct of all public institutions helpfully 
 and for their greater efficiency. They correct misin 
 formation, investigate wrongdoing and advise the pub 
 lic where the blame lies. They are made up of persons 
 with no axes to grind ; their terms of office are long and 
 
TO SOCIAL SERVICE WORKERS. 159 
 
 lap over administration after administration. They 
 serve without pay, save as to actual expenses, and the 
 salaries of expert workers employed to carry out their 
 policies and to perform services exacted by them. 
 They are made up of persons of the highest character, 
 willing to give of their time and thought to social serv 
 ice without pecuniary or other reward save that they 
 have the consciousness of being helpful in making 
 things better than they are. 
 
 Such a body of men California has in its State Board 
 of Charities and Corrections, and social service workers 
 can do nothing more to the purpose than to acquaint 
 themselves with this Board, its members and officers, 
 and lend them a cordial support in whatever they may 
 undertake to do. Likewise, to defend and protect the 
 Board when the powers of political darkness would 
 prevail against them. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Abandoned child, the 62 
 
 Accessory to the fact 20 
 
 Accomplices before the fact 21 
 
 Accomplishments 23 
 
 Adolescence 15 
 
 Adoption 96 
 
 Agricultural education not contemplated 28 
 
 Altruism, highest, rare 9 
 
 Amigh, Mrs. Ophelia 46 
 
 Assimilation, benevolent and malevolent 78 
 
 Baldwinsville hospital for epileptics 117 
 
 Black-sheep problem, the ^ 15 
 
 Blind, competition with seeing 124 
 
 interesting figures regarding 125 
 
 language easy for 123 
 
 leading the 122 
 
 manual training for 124 
 
 rational goal to be sought 126 
 
 sense judgments difficult 123 
 
 Boarding-out system, the 
 
 Boston system 94 
 
 in Massachusetts .--29, 93 
 
 in Pennsylvania 95 
 
 Bound for the west, Dobb s Ferry 54 
 
 Broken homes --- 19 
 
 Buckeyes, little lone 
 
 California idea, the 67 
 
 California, what it should do 90, 121, 144, 150 
 
 Catholic Home Bureau of New York , 85 
 
 Catholic Protectory at \Vestchester 56 
 
 Catholic Technical School 100 
 
 Charities and Corrections. State Board of 91, 158 
 
 Child, state ultimate guardian of 
 
 Child problem, odds and ends of 
 
 Children, cost to orphanages 66 
 
 cost to state 67 
 
 help employed to care for 
 
 home-finding for 
 
 must be kept at school - 153 
 
 number cared for 65 
 
 remediable deficiencies of 73 
 
 unattractive, taking care of 77 
 
 untrained straightened up 77 
 
 Children s aid societies _ - 89 
 
 Children s Guardians of New Jersey... 
 
 Cleveland Protestant Orphanage 81 
 
162 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Colony system for insane 150 
 
 a suggestion for California 150 
 
 Compulsory education in Connecticut and California 153 
 
 Concord Reformatory 133 
 
 Connecticut, how it pays for girls 50 
 
 Connecticut Industrial School for Girls 49 
 
 classification 50 
 
 distinctive feature at 50 
 
 education 51 
 
 Contract labor more frightful than hurtful 140 
 
 Cooking school, Michigan Home for Girls 44 
 
 Corporal punishment abolished 26 
 
 Cost of maintenance in institutions 7 
 
 Cottage plan, as to orphanages 78, 79 
 
 at Dobb s Ferry 53 
 
 at Glen Mills 33 
 
 at Geneva, Illinois 47 
 
 comparative cost of 79 
 
 Cottages, cost of, at Dobb s P^erry 53 
 
 Craig Colony at Sonyea, New York 116 
 
 Credit system at Elmira 132 
 
 Criminals, classes of 137 
 
 Criminality, the highway to 151 
 
 Cripples, physical and moral 12 
 
 "Daddy" 36 
 
 Deaf and blind, school for :.__ 120 
 
 Deaf, the 118 
 
 fife and drum corps of 121 
 
 language difficult for 119 
 
 made self-sustaining 122 
 
 manual alphabet for 119 
 
 oral method of conversing 119 
 
 s gn language of 118 
 
 what California should do 121 
 
 what science has done for :. 122 
 
 Dependency, indeterminate 61 
 
 judicially determined 63 
 
 Dependent child, the__ 60 
 
 what is 61 
 
 what California is doing for 65 
 
 Delirium, not insanity - 147 
 
 Desertion of family . . 98 
 
 Discipline at Concord Reformatory 134 
 
 at Glen Mills 35 
 
 at Illinois School for Girls__. 
 
 in Lyman School 30 
 
 Disobedient and untrained 
 
 "Oobb s Ferry, children committed to 55 
 
 Domestic art and science at Westchester 
 
 Drunkards committed to Concord Reformatory _--135 
 
 Economies, where possible 
 
 Elmira Reformatory 
 
 credit system at 
 
 discipline at 
 
 how reformation is accomplished 131 
 
INDEX. 163 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Elmira Reformatory, industrial training at 131 
 
 material to work on 130 
 
 story in figures 130 
 
 the school 131 
 
 Epilepsy 114 
 
 hereditary tendency 115 
 
 operations futile 118 
 
 science at work upon 115 
 
 self-control best 117 
 
 Epileptic colony idea 115 
 
 Fallacies, a few dispelled 70 
 
 Farm, looking for a 60 
 
 Feeble-minded, the _ 101 
 
 at Elwyn, Pennsylvania 105 
 
 at Fort Wayne, Indiana _ 104 
 
 causes of 102 
 
 institutions visited 104 
 
 New Jersey Training. School for 106 
 
 not all born so 104 
 
 results of training 110 
 
 rewards but no punishments 107 
 
 situation in California - 102 
 
 store for 108 
 
 what can be done for them 103 
 
 Feeble-minded women 112 
 
 in other states 113 
 
 New Jersey Home for 113 
 
 plain needs of 114 
 
 Fernald, Dr. Walter E 109 
 
 Foundlings 69 
 
 law regarding, at fault 71 
 
 mortality among 70 
 
 Fourteen, after, what 99 
 
 Free hand, lack of 10 
 
 Gardening at Adrian . 45 
 
 George Junior Republic...- 36 
 
 for boys and girls 37 
 
 government at 39 
 
 the saving grace of property 39 
 
 the system 38. 
 
 Girls department at Rochester Reform School closed 27 
 
 Glen Mills House "of Refuge 32 
 
 spirit of 34 
 
 Going to the country 27 
 
 Half orphan, the 61 
 
 Harper Lodge 112 
 
 Hartford Retreat 147 
 
 Help employed 66 
 
 Holding in leash 23 
 
 Home finding, authorized 91 
 
 for children 83 
 
 Home tie, the 31 
 
 Homes for aged, injustice of 127 
 
 Horizon, circumscribed 9 
 
 How bad girls are made good , 22 
 
164 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Human animal, the 16 
 
 Human limitations 9 
 
 Hurt minds, healing of 144 
 
 Illinois Training- School for Girls 46 
 
 In the light of fifty years 25 
 
 Indenture 97 
 
 Indeterminate sentence, the 136 
 
 Industrial education at Concord Reformatory 133 
 
 Industrial life, Connecticut School for Girls 51 
 
 Industrial training, at Elmira 131 
 
 at Westchester 58 
 
 Industries at Geneva, Illinois 48 
 
 Infirmity, the handicap of 73 
 
 Injustice, the victims of 11 
 
 Insane, colony system for 150 
 
 hope for the acute 146 
 
 labor of patients in hospitals for 148 
 
 Insanity, causes of 145 
 
 kinds of 146 
 
 results of the healing art 149 
 
 Institutionalism, a little of it good 78 
 
 in orphanages 77 
 
 Iowa s Soldiers and Sailors Orphans Home 79 
 
 Italian women 72 
 
 Jails, district system 155 
 
 the bad work of 155 
 
 Johnstone, Edward R -_- 107 
 
 Juvenile court system, extend the 63 
 
 Law liberally construed 63 
 
 Legislating in the light of experience 42 
 
 Lewdness, causes of 21 
 
 Liberty, large, allowed 41 
 
 Licentious life, the 149 
 
 Love of a good woman _ 22 
 
 Lyman School for Boys 29 
 
 Machinery, up-to-date, in prisons 141 
 
 Man, at head of girls school 52 
 
 Manual alphabet, the 119 
 
 Manual and agricultural training 154 
 
 Manual -training era 25 
 
 Manufacturing on state account, the Illinois scheme 142 
 
 apprentice labor J 143 
 
 Maternal instinct, the 21 
 
 Matrimony and motherhood 24 
 
 Matrimony, education and restraint of 155 
 
 McLean Hospital 147 
 
 Michigan Industrial Home for Girls 43 
 
 Michigan State School 80 
 
 Military discipline 26 
 
 Mill system, the . 55 
 
 Mother s milk 72 
 
 Motherhood 24 
 
 Music at Catholic Protectory 58 
 
INDEX. 165 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Music at Michigan Home for Girls 45 
 
 Net results at Dobb s Ferry 56 
 
 New York Juvenile Asylum. 53 
 
 future of 56 
 
 No money of boy s own 14 
 
 Occupation, unceasing 23 
 
 Office, continuity in 158 
 
 Orphanage, average time in 76 
 
 highest use of 76 
 
 proper function of 76 
 
 Orphanages, cost to the 66 
 
 health in 100 
 
 some that were visited 79 
 
 some things about 75 
 
 Other classes of wards of the state 13 
 
 Palmer Colony 117 
 
 Parental responsibility 18 
 
 Parole and discharge, at Glen Mills 35 
 
 Parole system at Lyman School 32 
 
 Paroled and placed out, how, at Westchester 59 
 
 Patient labor in hospitals for insane 148 
 
 Perfected cottage plan, Dobb s Ferry 53 
 
 Personnel of Michigan Home for Girls 44 
 
 Pessimism, no occasion for 8 
 
 Placing out, a state responsibility 83 
 
 at good will 97 
 
 Catholic Home Bureau 85 
 
 Cleveland Protestant Orphanage 81 
 
 in general 86 
 
 New York Juvenile Asylum system 85 
 
 the Michigan system 84 
 
 the New York way 84 
 
 why children are applied for 87 
 
 why children should be applied for 88 
 
 Plant of the Illinois Training School for Girls 47 
 
 of the Michigan Home for Girls 43 
 
 Play, utility of 48 
 
 Playgrounds, plenty of, at Westchester 57 
 
 Political patronage, misuse of 157 
 
 Politics, children to be placed outside of 158 
 
 Preventives or palliatives 8 
 
 Prison farm at Concord Reformatory 134 
 
 Prison labor 139 
 
 apprentice, mainly 143 
 
 competition with free 139 
 
 contract system 140 
 
 the Illinois scheme 142 
 
 Prison problem in California 144 
 
 Prison system vs. personality 137 
 
 Prisoner, the earnings by 143 
 
 Prisons and prisoners 135 
 
 Probation for boys 18 
 
 Problem, the 7 
 
 Prostitute, the natural-born 22 
 
166 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Public schools, how to keep children in 153 
 
 Raw human material, the 38 
 
 Real reformation rare 19 
 
 Redemptive element, the 28 
 
 Reformatory influences at Concord 135 
 
 Reformatory, the 128 
 
 Remedies for infirmities 74 
 
 Replacing, Catholic Home Bureau 86 
 
 in general 86 
 
 Results at Connecticut School for Girls 51 
 
 Rewards but no punishments 107 
 
 Roadhouse, the 21 
 
 Rochester Reform School 25 
 
 Saving graces, of Michigan Home for Girls 44 
 
 School attendance, appalling figures regarding 152 
 
 School work at Geneva, Illinois 47 
 
 Self-control, as preventive of insanity 149 
 
 value of, in epilepsy 117 
 
 Self-realization for boys 17 
 
 Sewing school, Michigan Home for Girls 45 
 
 Sifted out well 29 
 
 Sifting-out process, the 128 
 
 Silly age, the 20 
 
 Sloyd, American, at Westchester 58 
 
 Sloyd and garden 30 
 
 Social service workers, an appeal to 151 
 
 Spirit strong, flesh weak 10 
 
 St. Philip s Home 59 
 
 State Board of Charities and Corrections in California__91, 158 
 
 State Board of Examiners 90,92 
 
 State hospital, a 75 
 
 State-made goods at wholesale prices 141 
 
 Stubbornness 20 
 
 Success achieved, how 43 
 
 Success with children, reward of _ 100 
 
 Suggestion, the power of 156 
 
 Superannuated, the 12 
 
 Support, compulsory 98 
 
 System, little of, at Geneva 49 
 
 Templeton, colony at 111 
 
 Tendency to rut 10 
 
 Their stay short 28 
 
 Thought-inspiring institution, a 41 
 
 Trades and agriculture, at Glen Mills 33 
 
 Transplanting 16 
 
 Unattractive children, taking care of 77 
 
 Up-to-date machinery in prisons 141 
 
 Wages of sin, earners of 11 
 
 Ward s Island hospital 146 
 
 Wards of the state, who are 11 
 
 Waverly and Templeton 108 
 
INDEX. 167 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Waverly, educational work at - 109 
 
 . elemental educational work 110 
 
 institution at 108 
 
 kindergarten at - 109 
 
 Westchester, school at , 57 
 
 What makes bad boys good 16 
 
 What makes good boys bad 
 
 What makes good girls bad 19 
 
 Widow, California s policy toward 68 
 
 Work and instruction at Concord Reformatory 133 
 
 Wrong start, a 14 
 
 Zoo, well-equipped, for feeble-minded 107 
 
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